


Ladies, they get the job done

by tasalmalin



Category: Final Fantasy VII
Genre: F/F, Fix-It, Gen, Women Being Awesome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-22
Updated: 2017-07-08
Packaged: 2018-09-26 04:43:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 12
Words: 53,065
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9863393
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tasalmalin/pseuds/tasalmalin
Summary: They say that in life, the real treasure is the friends you make along the way. Tifa couldn't disagree more; she has to do everything around here, and is 300% done with all of these people. Especially that cute flower girl.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [this tumblr post](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/266594) by Yinza. 



> Only the original Final Fantasy VII game is canon here. All the backstory from Crisis Core, Dirge of Cerberus, etc. is completely ignored. Also, note that this is a fix-it, so it will follow canon until it really doesn't.
> 
> Warnings: Canon-typical violence, references to canon-typical tragic backstories, minor character death, major but villainous character death. Strong language

Tifa’s having what passes for a normal day in the Midgar slums. Avalanche is in intelligence-gathering mode, so she’s got plenty of time to gather the monster parts that are considered just the thing when added to a glass of alcohol.

There’s just no explaining people, sometimes.

But terrorism doesn’t exactly pay the bills, and hey, she’s not the one drinking this shit.

Even finding the body isn’t exactly unusual. People die all the time in the slums, from hunger, illness, drugs, or straight-up murder, the old standby. This train station leads above-Plate, so it’s a little odd that no one has tried to clean it up yet (or loot it), but, well, she’s not stopping, either.

Until it groans.

She really has to get this stuff back to Seventh Heaven, preferably before it oozes all over her nice, white shirt. It’s not any of her business.

The not-body groans again.

Tifa sighs. She can’t just walk away. Sometimes she’s an idiot.

“Hey,” she says, nudging the person with her foot. “You alive?”

Not her cleverest line, but then the guy, and up close it’s definitely a guy, flops over on his side and she can see his face and all the words fly out of her head.

_“Cloud?”_

~*~

“This guy is obviously Shinra,” Barret says, leaning over the bar and generally getting in her way.

“There’s no future in Nibelheim,” Tifa says. “Everyone who could get out, did. And Shinra’s the only game in town. Everyone knows that.”

Barret scowls and folds his arms over his chest. “I don’t like it.”

Since they’ve had this conversation at least a dozen times already, Tifa doesn’t feel the least bit guilty about ignoring him.

“Hey, I think he’s waking up!” Marlene shouts.

Tifa and Barret race up the narrow stairs, and those shoulders of his are brushing the walls and blocking her way, but then Tifa sees her chance and ducks under his arm, beating him into the room by a hair.

“Why don’t you go check on the bar,” Barret says, even though it’s the middle of the day and Marlene is four.

She grins and flounces off, giving Tifa a smug look.

Tifa doesn’t let her tend the bar—she’s _four_ —but she’ll have to fight that fight later, because it’s clear that Cloud is, finally, waking up.

He blinks, and whoa, she does _not_ remember his eyes being that bright. They almost seem to glow with their own light.

“SOLDIER,” Barret says grimly, and checks that his gun-arm is loaded. He doesn’t quite point it at Cloud, but he’s obviously ready to do so at a moment’s notice.

“So he made it,” Tifa says. She hasn’t had much time to think of Cloud these last few years, too busy rebuilding her life from scratch and striking back against Shinra to dwell on childish promises, but she worried for him, sometimes. With the whole town lost in the fire, she hoped that perhaps Cloud might have survived, wherever he was, so she wouldn’t be the only one. But there aren’t any SOLDIERs left now. Not after Sephiroth.

Or so she thought.

“You didn’t mention he was SOLDIER!” Barret says, indignantly.

“Well I didn’t know. I haven’t seen him in five years, and he wasn’t SOLDIER then.”

“Wasn’t that about when the program was discontinued?”

Tifa’s saved from having to think of an answer to that by Cloud noticing her hovering over him.

“Who are you?” he asks, hoarse and weak.

Tifa tries to hide her frown. “It’s me… it’s Tifa,” she says. “We grew up together.”

“Right. Gongaga,” he says, and passes out again.

“What’s Gongaga?” she asks.

“It’s another town, on the Western Continent, I think,” Barret says. “Made the news a few years back when the mako reactor exploded.”

“Oh.”

“…didn’t you say you grew up in Nibelheim?”

“I think we might have a problem.”

~*~

Yeah. It’s a problem.

Cloud has the strangest memory issues Tifa has ever heard of. If pressed, he now recalls Tifa and how they were friends as children (they weren’t, not really) and her fall from the bridge. But he seems to think they grew up in Gongaga, which he describes as snowy, mountainous, and cold as shit (clearly Nibelheim; she checked, Gongaga is in a _jungle_ ) and populated with frogs that can turn people into frogs with a kiss (she doesn’t even want to know). He remembers the day he became a SOLDIER Third Class, which is a day he was still in Nibelheim skulking around and hiding from bullies. Yet he clearly has mako eyes and he must have gotten that big-ass sword from _somewhere_.

It’s just weird.

But he’s back on his feet now, can stay awake a whole day and has stopped losing the thread of the conversation mid-word, so that will just have to do.

It’s been… kind of nice, seeing a hint of home after all these years, but she’s been stuck at the bar for Cloud’s entire recovery, due to Barret’s not-entirely-unreasonable demand that they can’t just let some stranger and possible Shinra-sympathizer poke around their hideout.

Very aggravating. She’s sick of interminable planning sessions and ready to kick some ass.

Now if Cloud would just get the picture…

“There’s plenty of opportunities here in Midgar,” she lies through her teeth. _Maybe_ that’s true, Above-Plate, not that she would know, but here in the slums they’re slowly dying. Fucking Shinra. “I think it’s time for you to make your own way.”

“Well what are you doing?” Cloud asks.

She’d forgotten that he’s always been sort of clingy.

“I have the bar,” she says, and slaps a guy before he does anything that will lose him that hand. Asshole. “It’s a living.”

Cloud frowns like he’s confused.

She tries not to sigh.

Then Barret appears, and he’s got such a shit-eating grin on his face that she’s already cracking her knuckles before he even opens his mouth.

“So. Cloud. How are you in a fight?”

Oh no.

Cloud flexes because _men_ , though to be fair he definitely didn’t have those biceps when he left Shinra. “I do all right.”

“I hear you’ve turned your back on Shinra.”

“Completely,” Cloud says, with the same helplessly angry look the rest of them have when thinking about the corporate giant.

Tifa would be glad that Barret is finally convinced of this, because she’s tired of finding him creeping around Cloud’s room at night with a loaded gun, but she’s too busy trying to _set him on fire with her eyes_. This had _better not_ be going where she thinks it’s going.

“As it happens, we have a bit of an anti-Shinra operation going on here,” Barret says, taking Cloud’s arm and steering him towards the pinball machine. “I think we should talk.”

~*~

Their biggest operation yet, the product of almost six months of planning, and what is Tifa doing? Saving the world? Kicking Shinra in the balls? Oh no, not Tifa! That’s for Mister Recently-Comatose-And-Had-Literally-No-Idea-Avalanche-Even-Existed-Until-Two-Hours-Ago.

She is going to _kill_ Barret.

“Order up!” Marlene shouts, trying to balance a whole tray of cocktails and scramble up on the bar at the same time.

Tifa catches the tray deftly in one hand and Marlene with the other. “What did I say about hanging around back here? No serving alcohol until you can see over the bar!”

Marlene pouts. “But Daddy said I was doing such a good job!”

He is a dead man.

Marlene turns up the pout, adding big, watery eyes.

“Save it,” Tifa says. “I’m not a big marshmallow like some people, you’ll have to do better than that. Upstairs with you.”

“Are you really going to throw out someone as cute as me?” Marlene tries.

Tifa ignores that, carrying her to the stairs and seriously considering handcuffing her to a desk or something. She checked on her five minutes ago and Marlene was happily playing with her dolls in her room.

She’s almost to the stairs when someone grabs her ass.

She dumps Marlene on the nearest table and cracks her knuckles. It’s nice when the universe conveniently delivers masochistic idiots right when she’s in such a foul mood.

“Ooh!” Marlene squeals, clapping her hands together. “Kick him where it hurts!”

The Idiot blinks, starting to look a little nervous. Clearly he’s not too bright.

Other, wiser patrons are edging away.

Tifa sizes him up, ignoring the leer when he misinterprets her interest. He’s a big, beefy fellow, but it isn’t muscle straining the seams of his shirt. She could lift him easily enough, but then she’d have to actually touch it. She doesn’t even want to imagine when that thing was last washed.

So she kicks him instead, square in the chest, and chair and Idiot go sailing right out the door, which was considerately opened by one of her regulars.

She gives him a nod. “Thanks. It’s such a pain in the ass to replace the door.”

There’s a round of applause, and Marlene solemnly rates it a six out of ten, because he didn’t cry.

Somehow Tifa ends up letting Marlene sit on the bar and exchange stories of past ejections with whoever’s sitting there. That girl is too sneaky for her own good sometimes.

The bar’s almost empty and Marlene’s sleeping on one of the tables when the others finally get back.

Tifa’s all ready to lay into Barret for daring to leave her out of this, except…

“Where’s Cloud?”

Barret shrugs. “We split up in case we were followed. He knows where to go.”

“He’s only been out of bed for _one day_ ,” Tifa reminds him. “And what makes you think he knows his way around?”

“I’m sure he got out okay,” Wedge says. “He’s not a bad guy. Little quiet, maybe.”

“So did we, thanks for asking,” Biggs says.

She wants to get mad but, well, Cloud is an adult. It’s not like they shot him in the back or tossed him in the reactor. Surely he’s acquired _some_ self-preservation skills since she last saw him. “So how did it go?”

Jesse’s whole face lights up. “You should have seen the _explosion_!”

~*~

Cloud doesn’t turn up until the next morning, claiming he “got lost”, and with a flower tucked into his shirt from where he “just happened” to find a girl selling them.

Right. Well, she believes the part about getting distracted by a girl, at least.

Something must show on her face, because he holds out the flower like he can exchange it for mercy.

Tifa leaves him moaning on the floor and clutching his shin. Serves that asshole right for letting her worry about him all night.

The flower is nice, though. She wonders where this ‘Aerith’ got it.

~*~

They thought that blowing up the reactor would be a major blow to Shinra, but the bastards don’t even seem to have noticed. The explosion is relegated to the news ticker and passed off as a malfunction.

There isn’t even a blip in the power grid as the other reactors take up the slack.

“Well that was disappointing,” Biggs says. “Is it time to revisit our plan for assassinating the President?”

“No,” Tifa says, “because that is not a plan. That is you drawing cartoons of The Bastard dying in the most embarrassing ways possible, which is amusing, but is nothing at all like an actual plan.”

“Yeah,” Biggs says, grinning reminiscently.

“The problem is, that Shinra isn’t entirely stupid,” Wedge says. “They’ve cultivated this image of being all-powerful, and having the lights go out would mess with that.”

“Which is why we blew up the reactor,” Barret says, pounding the table for emphasis, “but they don’t even care!”

“So they obviously put some backups in place,” Wedge says loudly, even though trying to drown out Barret is an effort doomed from the start.

“I get it,” Tifa says. “They built more reactors than they really needed so they’d have a backup and could save face.”

“So we’ll blow them all up!” Barret shouts, punctuating his words with a mighty smack to the poor table. It makes an ominous cracking sound.

“But they’ll be expecting us now,” Cloud says.

“Quiet, newbie,” Barret says. “Figures you’d want to protect Shinra property.”

Tifa smacks his shoulder. “It’s a perfectly valid point and you know it. We’ll need a completely different entrance plan this time.”

“I’ve got an idea,” Jesse says.

They all shudder, even Cloud, though he looks like he’s just copying them. He doesn’t have any experience with Jesse Plans, so he doesn’t know. But he will. Oh, he will.

Tifa has a watch Jesse gave her once. It doesn’t show the time, but it does have a proliferation of brightly colored buttons, none of which she’s quite dared to touch. She likes her wrist still attached to her arm, thank you.

Jesse’s probably her favorite member of Avalanche; it’s nice to have another woman around, and Jesse doesn’t shy away from violence but doesn’t let the need to impress everyone else interfere with doing her job. And she’s a brilliant hacker. She’s just a bit… explosion happy.

She explains the plan.

It’s actually a pretty good plan.

“Okay, let’s do that,” Barret says. “Jesse, get those IDs. Biggs and Wedge, you make the explosives. No, Jesse, maybe next time. SOLDIER, you stay right there where I can keep an eye on you.”

“What about me?” Tifa asks. “You’re not leaving me behind again.”

Barret looks shifty. He was so going to leave her behind again.

Tifa glares at him.

Barret glares back.

“She’s your kid,” Tifa says. “You stay with her, and I’ll go off and fight Shinra.”

“She can stay by herself,” Barret says, because he knows exactly what Tifa thinks of leaving a kid alone for hours on end in a dive bar in the slums.

“I’m not the team mom,” Tifa says, not backing down. “Assign someone else, or stay yourself.”

~*~

He doesn’t assign someone else. Nor does he stay behind.

Tifa’s pissed, but she reminds herself that Marlene isn’t her kid, that Marlene’s a hundred times smarter than Barret could even dream of being, and this isn’t Tifa’s responsibility.

She takes her irritation out on the Shinra troops. It’s always nice to combine work and pleasure.

“Um,” Cloud says.

She ignores him, leaving a trail of shattered kneecaps in her wake.

Jesse gives her a thumbs-up then gets straight to business. “I got most of the locks,” she says. “But the last one has to be triggered simultaneously from three different access points. For security.”

“But they’re right next to each other,” Tifa points out.

“Shinra,” Jesse reminds her.

Tifa, Barret, and now Cloud are the fighters, so they head deeper into the reactor while the others guard their exit. Jesse mopes about not getting to be the one to set the explosives.

Tifa wasn’t on the last mission (thanks a lot, _Barret_ ), so she’s not sure if she should be surprised or not that there’s so few people here. Goddess knows Barret wouldn’t notice something unusual if it punched him in the face, and Cloud isn’t much better. They’re both waving their weapons around far more than is strictly necessary, and appear to have engaged in some kind of competition to see who can make the most noise taking out the guards.

Maybe it’s just a guy thing.

It’s almost insultingly easy to set the charges, then it’s time to haul ass and get out of here before the whole place explodes.

They run into their first hiccup when they find Jesse with her foot caught in the grating.

“You’re not even supposed to be in here,” Tifa scolds, supporting her weight while Cloud eases the foot free.

“Sorry,” she says, biting her lip. “I thought I heard something.”

“I think it’s broken,” Cloud says, manipulating the ankle gently.

“No, it’s fine,” Jesse says, white-faced.

“Obviously not,” Tifa says. It doesn’t take a medical degree to see that the ankle is purple and already twice the size it’s meant to be. “Here, lean on me.”

“We going out the roof again?” Barret asks.

“Looks like,” Cloud says.

“I hate heights,” Barret mutters.

“You’ll just have to deal with it,” Tifa says. “It’s not like we’re going to jump off. There’s emergency ladders.”

“Do you hear something?” Cloud asks, bringing up the rear as they reach the top of the reactor.

“No,” Tifa says, even as the distinct sound of something mechanical reaches her ears. It can’t be a car, not all the way up here. A helicopter? A giant robot?

Both, it turns out, and Tifa has to shove all her emotions deep down somewhere to deal with later (or never) as The Bastard himself gloats that they walked right into his trap and a prototype robot almost blasts them all to bits and Cloud falls off the reactor and the whole thing starts falling down around their ears.

“Come on,” Barret says, when she’s just standing there stupidly with her hand reaching out for empty air. “We have to go.”

~*~

“It was a trap,” Tifa says later, when a very subdued group is gathered around the table. No one calls her out for stating the obvious, and words just keep spilling out. “They knew we were coming, and they didn’t just plan to catch us, they wanted to humiliate us. I wonder if there was a robot in every reactor, just in case. They wanted to rub in our faces how powerless we are.”

“So what else is new?” Jesse asks bitterly, bad ankle propped up on the table.

“They’re not going to be satisfied with… with just one death,” Tifa says, daring the others to comment on the hitch in her voice. They didn’t. “They’ll want to crush us.”

“Yeah,” Barret says. “That’s Shinra’s style, all right.”

“We have to know what they’re going to do, and we can’t wait for the information to drift down through our usual contacts,” Tifa says. “We have to go straight to the source.”

“Um,” Barret says. “What?”

Biggs and Wedge protest, loudly. Barret throws a chair. Jesse bemoans her busted ankle that prevents her from joining in on “the fun”. But Tifa won’t be deterred and when they won’t agree with her plan she ignores them and just walks out.

She doesn’t do a lot of undercover work—for some reason, the others don’t think she has the “temperament” for it, whatever that’s supposed to mean—but she does have a slinky dress with a plunging neckline, for emergencies.

One of the heels is missing from her nice shoes, so her regular sandals will just have to do. Not like anyone is looking at her feet in this get-up anyway.

She stalks toward Wall Market, and normally she’d be prime prey dressed like this, but she must be giving off a vibe or something because everyone leaves her alone.

Which pisses her off. She’d much rather be pounding someone’s face in than actually thinking right now, because—well, because.

She’s been with Avalanche almost four years now. Barret was already there when she stumbled across the group, Nibelheim still fresh in her mind and filled with rage. People have drifted in and out since then, and she’s not really close with any of them. None of them know each other’s stories, just that there is a story. Tifa doesn’t want to talk about Nibelheim, and she doesn’t want to know what their Nibelheims are. She has enough trouble dealing with her own shit.

So yeah, they’re all desperate, and they have nothing left to lose. Except Barret, who still has Marlene, and apparently Tifa had a childhood friend she barely got to see again before Shinra took him, too.

Fucking Shinra.

Nothing left to lose, so what does it matter if they get killed? She’s known Avalanche people who’ve died before, blowing themselves up on purpose or gunned down by Shinra while on a mission. It sucks, but it happens. They all knew what they were signing up for.

She thought she’d left childishness behind her in Nibelheim, but now she’s not so sure. She’d seriously, honestly thought that they weren’t hurting anyone else, that only Avalanche was at risk for their strikes against Shinra.

It’s like she forgot everything she ever learned about Shinra. Did they apologize when one of their elite SOLDIERs went rogue and burned down her entire town, children and innocents alike? When General Sephiroth killed her father, a ludicrous mismatch of power and ability, did Shinra care?

Of course not.

And now President Shinra has seen her face, seen Barret’s face. Seventh Heaven has a good reputation in the slums, people know who they are. It won’t be _that_ difficult to track them down.

And then… what will Shinra do?

She doesn’t know, if she tries to imagine she’ll have to go cry in a corner somewhere and that won’t help anyone. She can only move forward, try and mitigate the looming disaster.

And now she’s at Don Corneo’s Mansion, the unofficial leader of the slums, and not-at-all secretly on Shinra’s payroll. She tries to summon up a flirtatious smile for the guard, but probably just looks nauseated.

It doesn’t matter, he’s gawking at her breasts and couldn’t care less what her face looks like.

She’s ushered inside to wait for the boss, so he can decide if she’s worth testing out personally before selling her to one of his many, lucrative prostitution businesses. The Don’s men have been known to kidnap girls off the street, but most volunteer. It’s better than starving to death, and safer than trying to turn tricks on your own.

Fortunately, despite being scum that doesn’t deserve to be called human, Don Corneo is dumb as shit. The ostentatious room she’s led to so she can “freshen up”—prettier girls get better placements, everyone knows that—isn’t even locked.

Hmm. If she was a stupid, wealthy asshole whose brain resides in his dick, where would she hide stuff she didn’t want anyone to know about?

A basement entrance catches her eye, the bare stone and guttering torches looking deeply out of place next to the gaudy hideousness of the rest of the decor.

Perfect.

The basement is suspicious as hell, looks like some very sketchy science happened here, or a deeply disturbing medical fetish, but no documents with ‘Shinra’s Secret Plans’ written on them. Damn.

She’s barely started poking around when she hears voices, then the unmistakable sound of footsteps on the stairs.

Crap.

She looks around, but there’s nowhere to hide, so she decides any attempt to do so would just look more suspicious and plasters a vacant expression on her face.

Luckily it’s just more women, probably here for the same reasons she—ostensibly—is.

Except…

“Um. Cloud, is that you?”

Cloud, and it’s definitely Cloud, squeaks and crosses his arms over his chest like _that_ makes any sense. He’s wearing a wig and makeup and a long purple dress that actually looks _really good_ on him and she tries not to feel jealous. She could never pull off a dress like that, she’d be falling out all over the place.

“You must be Tifa,” the other girl says. Her red dress is much simpler than Cloud’s, her figure doesn’t need the extra help, and her face lights up in a bright smile that makes her unusual green eyes shine. “I’m Aerith, you might know me as the flower girl.”

Tifa’s brain is running in circles, going from ‘Cloud is alive’ to ‘Cloud is wearing a dress and looks better than me’ to ‘he ran off with a girl and let me worry _again_ ’ but, most distressingly of all, she can’t summon up any annoyance with the mysterious Aerith and is mostly just stuck on ‘oh no, she’s cute’.

“We’re here to rescue you,” Cloud says, mercifully distracting her from her thoughts.

She punches him, none-too-gently. “Who’s the idiot who fell off the reactor, and who has been a senior member of a covert organization for years now? I’m perfectly fine, I don’t need rescuing.”

“Oh.”

“How’d you get roped into this?” she asks Aerith.

Aerith smiles again, and Tifa really wishes she wouldn’t do that. It’s not good for her health. “Seemed like the thing to do,” she says. “I’m glad you’re okay.”

The thing is, she even sounds like she means it. They’ve known each other for about two minutes. How’d she survive with her faith in humanity intact in the Midgar slums?

And what could she possibly see in Cloud?

“Tifa is obviously on a mission,” Aerith says. “We have to help her.”

“Okay, Aerith,” Cloud says.

Ah. Tifa rearranges a few things in her head. She’s not with Cloud, Cloud is with her. That makes so much more sense.

Aerith gives her an expectant look, but just then one of the Don’s guards appears at the head of the stairs. He doesn’t seem at all surprised or bothered by the fact that the three of them are just lurking in the basement. “He’s ready for you now.”

They’re escorted at gunpoint to a bedroom that makes the rest of the house look plain, and the Don himself is wearing a tiny red velvet bathrobe that really does not cover him adequately.

Tifa’s pretty sure she throws up in her mouth a little.

The guard departs with a smirk and a smack to Cloud’s ass, then the Don is eyeing the three of them hungrily.

Tifa counts down the seconds, waiting for the guard to be out of hearing range, and lets herself be ogled.

The Don isn’t focusing on her, anyway. It’s not the first time this has happened, sometimes she thinks she’s man-repellent or something. Barret says that a man can sense that she could rip his balls off with her bare hands. Which, she thinks that’s one of her more attractive qualities, but whatever.

It doesn’t stop him from pawing at her breasts, unfortunately, but she’s pretty sure it’s been long enough and grabs his hand, twisting hard.

He yelps and falls back on the bed, and ugh, the view has not improved, clutching his mangled hand.

Looks like she broke a few fingers. Damn. She was hoping for a full set.

“What’s Shinra planning?” Tifa asks, taking a step forward with one fist raised. “Start talking before I crush your balls into paste.”

He gulps audibly, but doesn’t look like he doubts her. Not as dumb as he looks, then.

“It wasn’t me,” he babbles. “It was all that Avalanche group. Crazy terrorists. One of them has a gun instead of an arm. I just put the word out I was looking for him. Anyone could have done it. Barely my fault at all.”

“Put out the word for who?” Tifa asks.

He looks shifty.

Aerith leans forward with a sunny smile. “Want me to hold him down for you?”

“Heidegger!” he squeals. “It was Heidegger, of Shinra!”

“Evil bastard,” Cloud says. “And not as stupid as the rest of them. What’s he planning?”

“Like I’m going to tell you! He oversees the Turks!”

“So you do know,” Cloud says. He pulls that massive sword from thin air, as far as Tifa can tell. “After Tifa and Aerith get done with you, I’ll slice off anything that’s left.”

He whimpers, looking back and forth between them, but doesn’t find any sympathy. “Ahh, fine! They know Avalanche is hiding in Sector 7 somewhere, so they’re going to crush them, literally. They’re going to blow the support beam and drop the Plate!”

“You’re lying,” Tifa says. “They wouldn’t dare. They care about the people _on_ the Plate!”

“Shinra only cares about himself,” Cloud says, grimly.

“We have to warn everyone,” Aerith says. “Quickly.”

They’re almost to the door when Don Corneo calls after them.

“Come on,” Tifa says. “There can’t be anything worse than dropping the Plate.”

“It’s Shinra,” Cloud argues, and stops to listen.

“Suckers,” Don Corneo says, and the floor drops out from under them.

Tifa falls at least two stories, conveniently bouncing off some pipes so she can’t build up too much speed, then lands on her ass in stinking sewer water.

It takes her several seconds to get her breath back, especially since she’s trying very hard not to actually inhale any of the truly epic stench. Then— “Cloud, you dumbass.”

“I think that’s it for this dress,” Cloud says mournfully.

Aerith giggles. Cutely.

Tifa hates everything.

~*~

Of course the first few manholes are sealed shut, and they must go under the entirety of Sector 6 before they finally find a way out.

Into the train graveyard.

“Damn it,” Tifa says, punching at the air when a ghost fades away. Smugly, she’d swear to it. “He’s had plenty of time to tell them about us. We don’t have time for messing around!”

“What even is that!?” Cloud demands, running past with a hell house chomping at his heels.

“I’ve got it,” Aerith says, spinning her staff expertly.

That’s not going to do shit against a hell house.

The staff starts to levitate on its own, and Aerith folds her hands together like she’s praying.

Tifa kicks at the house which, being solid wood, is unaffected. Can’t say the same for her foot, though.

And then Aerith conjures fire out of the air and hurls it at the house, burning it to a crisp.

“…huh,” Tifa says.

“Right, materia. I should have thought of that,” Cloud says, waves his hands around a bit, and freezes the house and the stray flames in blocks of ice.

“You and I, we are going to have words,” Tifa says. “Later.”

The stupid train wreckage is everywhere and it takes for-freaking-ever to get over, around or through it. They’re all out of breath when they finally burst into the station.

Tifa can hear the distant sound of gunfire.

“It’s happening right now,” Cloud says, looking ill.

“We have to stop them,” Tifa says, then freezes midstep. “Marlene. If Barret caught wind of this, he’d charge right in guns blazing, damn irresponsible fool probably didn’t think twice about leaving her at the bar, he never does, and we won’t be too late but _what if we are_ —”

“Calm down,” Aerith says, gripping her shoulders and giving her a good shake. “I’ll get her out.”

“The bar’s called Seventh Heaven,” Tifa says.

“I know it.”

“Marlene’s four. She’ll probably be trying to mix drinks. You can tell her the truth, she’ll probably make the evacuation plan herself. And—”

“I’ll find her,” Aerith interrupts. “And I’ll yell for everyone to get out, loud as I can. I’ll take care of it.”

“Right,” Tifa says. “Come on Cloud, let’s go.”

She runs so fast her feet hardly seem to touch the ground.

It isn’t fast enough.

She’s just charged through the fence around the support pillar—gate forced open and mangled, not good—when Wedge’s body falls practically on top of her.

“Oh no,” Cloud says, stopping to check for a pulse.

Tifa doesn’t stop. Wedge would want her to save everyone, not stay and cry over him. She doesn’t stop when she finds Biggs sprawled still and staring at the base of the stairs, or when she passes Jesse gasping and trying to put pressure on her entire left side.

She charges out onto the platform, takes in the scene in a glance, and directs all her momentum into the smug Turk menacing Barret with a stick. He has a second to look surprised before her fist drives into the floating ribs on his right side.

There’s several, satisfying cracks, and he doubles over, positioning his face perfectly for her waiting knee. His head snaps back, neck doesn’t snap though, pity, but his nose is definitely broken, eyes already bruising.

“Get the switch!” Barret shouts.

She stomps on the Turk’s hand, crushing it, but not before he’s pressed the damn button.

“Shit. Shit! How do we disarm it!”

Little bastard _laughs_ , how can he even _breathe_ , and she’s going to kick his balls out his _throat_ , what the fuck is she going to do, she doesn’t know a damn thing about disarming bombs, that’s all Jesse, bleeding out on the stairs.

“What’s going on?” Cloud asks.

She gestures at the bombs, timer ticking obnoxiously downwards.

Three minutes.

She sees the helicopter before she hears it, too much ambient noise, or maybe it’s just the roaring in her ears, but she doesn’t know it’s there until the red-headed _shit_ is eeling his way across the platform and _rolling_ onto it, what the _hell_ do they teach these Turks, and another of those suited assholes is gloating because…

Shit.

Aerith!

Two minutes.

Cloud and Barret are muttering to one another, poking at wires like they have a fucking clue what they’re doing. They can’t even rip the things out, it’s like they’ve been fused to the support or something.

Tifa has never felt so helpless, not while her mom wasted away to nothing, not when her dad breathed his last in her arms, not when she picked up Sephiroth’s own sword and tried to stab the elite SOLDIER in the back. Not even when he almost cut her in half and tossed her away, leaving her to cry and choke and bleed and try to hold her insides in with her bare hands. She doesn’t know what to do.

The Turk is still monologuing, and she honestly couldn’t give a shit.

One minute.

“We should go,” the Turk says, all smugness even with his colleague bleeding all over his shoes. “Wouldn’t want to get caught in the explosion.”

She hopes that little bastard _dies in agony_ , and his jackass boss, too.

“Don’t worry,” Aerith says, meeting her eyes. “She’s safe.”

Right. Marlene.

All that girl has left is Barret. He can’t die here, raging at Shinra and prodding uselessly at the bombs. It’s too late. They have to go.

“Come on,” she says, grabbing both men by the scruff of the neck. “We’re going.”

“We can’t—”

“ _Leave it_ , Cloud. It doesn’t matter anymore.”

“Going where?” Barret asks suspiciously, as she climbs up on the railing. “We’ve only got a few seconds left. What are you—oh, _SHIT!_ ”


	2. Chapter 2

“I hate you,” Barret says, puking into a pile of rubble. “I am never speaking to you again.”

“We made it, didn’t we?” Tifa asks. “Now keep moving.”

“You jumped off,” Barret moans. “Must have been at least ten stories.”

“Marlene?” Tifa reminds him. “She’s this way?”

“I think,” Cloud says, squinting at three identical piles of twisted scrap metal and garbage. “I mean, I’m pretty sure.”

“Oh, Cloud.” It’s ridiculous to let the guy with gaping holes in his memory guide them, but he’s the only one who’s been to Aerith’s house, and that’s their best guess for where she would have taken Marlene.

Barret pushes himself to his feet, still looking decidedly green, and stumbles forward a few steps.

It starts to get quiet.

“Where’d all this metal come from anyway?” Cloud asks, too high and too fast.

“Robots,” Barret says confidently. “Shinra’s always building new models, all of them crap.”

“I dunno, this looks like a crane.”

“A _robot_ crane, maybe.”

It’s a stupid conversation, like everything else since, well, since, but they cling to it with the same desperation as when they fled the scene of—the scene. There are probably survivors, somewhere, Aerith went to warn them, and Aerith got out (on a helicopter) so maybe a few people, the ones who live right on the borders of 6 and 8, maybe they…

“What do you think, Tifa?”

“Hmm?”

Barret rolls his eyes, looking nauseous and a little bit mad. “Could robots have built the whole city?”

“Oh, um, maybe. With their little robot arms.” She makes a vague pinching motion with one hand.

Cloud and Barret both give her identical, disbelieving looks, then burst into desperate-sounding laughter.

After a moment, she joins them.

They stumble over Aerith’s house more or less by accident, no matter what Cloud claims. They know it’s hers because it’s got a great huge garden behind it, riotous with flowers of every color and description. It’s a subtle clue.

Barret starts dragging his feet at the gate.

She can’t blame him. Aerith said she was safe, and there really couldn’t be any other ‘she’ that she could have meant, not in that moment, but that’s not the same as _knowing_ , and Marlene could be—

“Daddy!”

—right here.

Barret practically falls on her, crying and laughing and hugging her close with both arms, even though he’s usually careful not to touch her with the gun.

Tifa swipes at her eyes, she’s just so happy for them, and happy for herself, too, because she’s not team mom or chief nurturer just because she’s a woman, but that doesn’t mean Marlene hasn’t carved a place for herself in her heart, and Barret too, the giant oaf. She wants to hug her too, hug them both, reassure herself that they’re all alive, but she holds herself back.

This is a family moment, and she won’t intrude.

There’s a hand on her shoulder, and it’s Cloud, and his eyes reflect all her own thoughts back to her. He hasn’t known this small family nearly as long as she has, of course, but he’s alone, too.

“Better come inside,” an older woman says grimly. “You never know who might be watching.”

Her name is Elmyra, and she’s Aerith’s mother. Adopted.

“You see, Aerith is… Aerith is special,” Elmyra says, watching Barret fawning over Marlene with tears in her eyes. “I found her mother dying, little Aerith beside her. She told me… incredible things. Fantastical things. I didn’t believe her. Not at first.”

“But?” Tifa prompts, when she falls silent.

“As she got older, Aerith started hearing voices. At first I thought… well, what does anyone think? I told her not to talk about it, not to listen. Then things started happening. Flowers blooming, magical fires, Turks lurking around the corner.”

“Turks?” Cloud asks sharply.

“Ifalna—that was Aerith’s birth mother—she told me that she escaped from a man called Hojo.” She breaks off, wide-eyed, when Cloud scowls ferociously and spits on the floor.

“Sorry,” he says, not sounding sorry at all. “I just—I know that man. I escaped him once, too. Not soon enough. He’s a monster.”

Tifa has to look away from the expression in his eyes.

“Well,” Elmyra says. “Just so. Apparently he was running all sorts of horrible experiments on them, and one day, Ifalna saw her opportunity, so she took Aerith and ran. They shot her, but she kept going, got on the train and all the way down to the station before she collapsed.”

“Did she die there?” Tifa asks softly.

“Yes. Little Aerith held her hand the whole time. I tried to shield her eyes, but she wouldn’t have it. Kept telling me that her mom wasn’t really gone, that she was still right there.”

“Daddy says that,” Marlene pipes up unexpectedly. “He says my mommy and my other daddy are always watching out for me.”

Barret blushes a little, daring them to comment.

“I’m sure they are,” Elmyra says kindly. “But Aerith is something called a Cetra, a very spiritual people who lived on this Planet before humans. She can hear the Planet speaking to her… and the voices of those who have passed on.”

“That explains why she was so good with materia,” Cloud says into the sudden silence.

Tifa elbows him sharply. “That’s your takeaway from that?”

“Ow,” he says, rubbing his arm. “It’s just that only SOLDIERs and Wutaian ninja are supposed to be able to use materia. I thought I was forgetting things again.”

“So is that why the Turks were after her?”

“Yes. Apparently this Hojo character lost interest in her or something; Aerith says she’s only half-Cetra, that her father was a Shinra scientist, so maybe he only wanted her mother. Whatever the reason, once the Turks found her again, they kept an eye on her, but they never brought her in.” Elmyra sighs. “Not until now.”

“She didn’t try and escape? Fight back? She’s strong,” Cloud says.

“If you’re really Shinra, then you know what the Turks are like. I was here, and little Marlene. She turned herself in so they wouldn’t feel the need to come after her.”

Barret slams his fist on the table, making them all jump. “I’m going after her,” he says.

Cloud chokes on air.

“She saved Marlene,” Barret says. “Twice. And that means something to me. I’m going.”

“Not without me,” Tifa says. “I was the one who sent her into danger. And I liked her.”

Cloud sighs. “I never thought I’d ever voluntarily put myself in Hojo’s orbit again. But it’s Aerith. Count me in.”

“And me!” Marlene says.

“I think not,” Elmyra says, while Barret is still sputtering. “Someone has to stay and protect me.”

“In case those Turks come back,” Marlene says, nodding decisively. “I’ll do it.”

‘Thank you’ Barret mouths behind her back.

“So it’s decided, then,” Tifa says. “We’ll break into Shinra and rescue Aerith.”

~*~

Easier said than done.

Elmyra loans them some clothes, because Cloud and Tifa are still in their tattered, stinking finery, but with all the chaos and… and carnage, none of the trains are running, and they’re still wanted terrorists. And they used all of Jesse’s fake IDs on their last mission.

Jesse…

Tifa shakes her head once, firmly. Now isn’t the time. Jesse is dead, but Aerith might still be alive. Is still alive. Definitely.

“There has to be another way up,” Cloud says. “Maybe we could shimmy up one of the other supports or something.”

Tifa tries to ignore the sick feeling in her stomach at the idea of going near another support right now. Or ever.

“Up Above-Plate?” a kid asks, grinning at them with two missing front teeth. “You know us slumrats aren’t welcome there.”

“But you know a way?” Tifa asks.

He shrugs. “I might. What’s in it for me?”

A couple of his buddies materialize out of nowhere and hold a whispered conference.

“All right,” the first kid says. “We’ll show you the trick.”

Tifa raises an eyebrow. That was easy.

They wind their way through Wall Market, down an alley, between a few piles of trash, to…

“No,” Tifa says flatly.

“We’ve only been up to the top of the wall,” one of the kids says. “Then there’s a bit where you kind of have to jump. But it sure looks like it goes all the way up.”

“This is a terrible idea,” Tifa says. “We can just climb on top of the train. Or wear helmets.”

“We’ve got to do this,” Barret says, like he wasn’t puking and crying for almost an hour after swinging off the exploding support pillar on a wire that was _much sturdier_ than this flimsy thing. “For Marlene.”

“For Aerith,” Cloud says, securing his sword in the makeshift sheath he threw together back at Elmyra’s. “Come on, Tifa, I’ll give you a boost.”

“What makes you think that flimsy thing can even hold our weight?” she argues, but she’s weakening, and they all know it.

“It’s not flimsy,” Barret says. “This right here is a golden, shiny wire of hope!”

“Oh good goddess,” Tifa says, burying her face in her hands. “I’m embarrassed to know you. Just get moving, I’ll be right behind you.”

Barret starts climbing, swearing as he has to grip awkwardly with his elbow on one side. “Sometimes I’d kill for two thumbs again,” he grumbles, inching up the wire.

“You don’t want a boost?” Cloud asks, frowning.

“I’m wearing a skirt,” she reminds him. “I’m going last.”

“Right,” he says, blushing, and scoots up so fast Barret kicks him in the head.

The little gang has a lot to say about her ascent, at least until she nails two of them in the head with pieces of the wall.

“Please stop throwing things,” Cloud says, clutching the wire. “Every time you move it makes the whole thing sway.”

“I’ll throw you,” Tifa mutters.

Barret is chanting ‘for Marlene’ over and over and dripping sweat on her head.

“Jump’s coming up,” Cloud says eventually.

‘Jump’ does not adequately describe leaping from a narrow wire whipping in the wind to a rusty strut hanging on by a single bolt over a ten story drop. At least that’s Tifa’s opinion.

~*~

An eternity later, they flop onto the Plate, clinging to the bare metal with sincere adoration.

“Let’s never do that again,” Tifa says.

“I think I’m afraid of heights now,” Cloud says, “and I fell off the reactor, so I probably can’t die from falling off things.”

Barret just groans.

Tifa gives the boys—and herself—a minute to recover, then claps her hands briskly. “Okay, so what’s the plan?”

“I say we storm the place,” Barret says.

“Absolutely not. Next plan?”

“Maybe there’s a service elevator or something,” Cloud says. “It’s a big building.”

“Better plan. Start looking.”

They don’t find a side elevator, but they do find a back staircase. The door is so rusted over it almost won’t open, and the stairs are dusty.

“This is perfect,” Tifa says. “Obviously, no one ever comes here. We can get Aerith in and out without anyone seeing us.”

“I still think we could have gone in the front door,” Barret sulks.

“So do we have any idea where Aerith might be?” Tifa asks. “I mean, how big is this building, anyway?”

“The President’s office is on the top floor, which is 70 or 71, I think,” Cloud says absently. “Definitely seventy-something.”

Tifa looks at the stairs again, stretching up and up and up endlessly. “Damn.”

“But they wouldn’t be keeping her there,” Barret says quickly, as dismayed as she is. “It’s that Hojo guy that’s got her, not Old Man Shinra. Where’s _he_ at?”

“His primary lab is on the 67th floor,” Cloud says.

Barret looks like he might cry.

“How do you know all this?” Tifa has to ask.

“I told you, I used to be SOLDIER.”

Tifa and Barret exchange a look. As far as they can tell, Cloud hasn’t been wrong about _facts_. There is a place called Gongaga, it’s just that Cloud wasn’t born there. So he _could_ be right.

And it’s not like they have any better ideas.

“If we go in the front,” Barret tries one last time, “we could take the elevators.”

“Move your lazy ass,” Tifa grumbles. She rubs her poor quads in preemptive sympathy, then takes off at a brisk trot.

“We… could have… taken the… elevator!” Barret wheezes, collapsing on the last stair.

Tifa tries to step over him, but her legs feel like overcooked noodles and fold up of their own accord, and really, learning against his arm seems like a good choice just now. “If I am ever able to move again,” she announces, “I’ll market this as a workout program. I’ll be rolling in gil.”

Cloud jumps over both of them, looking like he just woke up from a long nap. “Come on, we’re there!”

“Fucking SOLDIER,” Barret groans, not moving.

Tifa deigns to turn her head. “Cloud. Tell me what I’m looking at.”

“Uh. The door?”

“Uh -huh. And the number?”

He squints, then flushes. “Um, 59.”

“What!?” Barret shouts.

“Hush,” Tifa says. She would elbow him, but it’s too much effort. She pokes him instead.

“Ow,” he says obligingly.

“Sixty and up are executive floors,” Cloud says apologetically. “They have a special elevator, with a key card.”

“Great,” Tifa says. She levers herself to her feet, every muscle screaming in protest. “Let’s go rough some people up. Someone’s bound to drop a key card sooner or later. And maybe put on a hat, disguise ourselves.”

“They’ll know something’s up as soon as we start attacking people,” Cloud points out.

“Right. Forget the hat, then. We’ll just have to move fast.” She prods at Barret with her foot.

He gets up, moaning and groaning and carrying on, the baby, and they push open the door.

Only to nearly fall in the laps of two guards.

“Lovely,” Tifa says. “Just our luck." 

~*~

“This is ridiculous,” Barret says. “How does anyone even get around this place?”

“People who are supposed to be here have key cards,” Cloud says dryly. “It’s only intruders like us that have to solve stupid puzzles and crawl through ventilation shafts. One might say that’s just good planning.”

“You’re a little shit, aren’t you,” Barret says amiably. “You definitely improve over time.”

“Thanks,” Cloud says, dryly.

“Not to interrupt the bonding moment,” Tifa says, waving at the latest round of robots come to challenge them. Everything they’ve encountered so far has been such shoddy workmanship she could shatter joints with her feet. These are good boots, but still.

If robots could look nervous, these would be.

She’s picking shrapnel out of her hair afterward—she didn’t even have to hit this one, it blew _itself_ up, seriously, who designs these things?—when she spots Barret crawling around on the floor. “What are you doing?”

“Looking for bullets,” Barret says. “I’m not made of ammo, you know. But these are all the wrong size. Useless hunks of metal.”

“Right. You saw it explode, right? Your gun is attached to your arm, do you really want anything Shinra made anywhere near that?”

He just grumbles under his breath and keeps looking.

“We’re here,” Cloud says tensely, one foot on the stairs. Next up is 67, and the infamous Professor Hojo.

Though hopefully not in person.

Goddess knows he’s had plenty of time to evacuate. Even if those guys they jumped back on 59 are still unconscious and no one’s noticed, they’ve been spotted on almost every floor in between. Frankly, she’s amazed that they haven’t been arrested yet. Or shot.

Cloud doesn’t seem to remember the very obvious chaos they’ve left in their wake, or maybe he’s just that unnerved by the thought of Hojo, because he makes some token effort to sneak, crouching against the wall and stepping lightly.

It doesn’t really work, because his sword keeps bumping into things and his hair is too tall and bright for effective sneaking, but it’s more than Barret manages.

There are a number of labs on the floor, but Cloud walks right by them. He seems to know exactly where he’s going.

Tifa squeaks embarrassingly when Cloud suddenly grabs her and dives behind a crate.

“Wha—?”

He claps a hand over her mouth and gestures frantically with the other.

Barret crowds in next to them, and there really is not enough space for three grown adults here and she can’t see a thing. There’s definitely someone else here, though, she can hear his nasally voice.

Some semi-silent, determined maneuvering later, she has a narrow view of the room, obscured by Barret’s shoulder on one side and a big tank on the other.

Hojo—if it is Hojo—cuts an unimpressive figure. He’s scrawny and rat-faced, and his hair is long and greasy and thinning in front. His lab coat is spotted with nothing she wants to know about.

Then she sees his eyes, and kind of wants a bath. Her soul feels dirty.

Ugh. It _has_ to be Hojo. There can’t be two of these guys in the world.

“I was going to clone you,” he’s saying, “or map your brain patterns and transfer them to something more durable, that won’t bleed or age or die. I was thinking a lamp. That cheapskate President still hasn’t replaced the bulb over my desk, so at least you’d be useful that way.”

…the fuck?

Tifa peers out a little further, ignoring Cloud’s hissed imprecations, and sees Aerith in a plastic or glass cage of some kind, right in the middle of the room. She’s putting up a good front of being totally unimpressed by Hojo’s extremely disturbing rambling.

“But our esteemed President didn’t like that idea. He wants the Promised Land, and only the Cetra know where that is. So I’ve decided to _breed_ you instead! So we have a backup in case of something… untoward. It worked for Gast, haha!”

Aerith’s eyes narrow, something about that struck home, but she lifts her chin and doesn’t answer.

Hojo wanders out of Tifa’s field of vision, and for a minute nothing much happens, and then a hole opens in the floor of the cage and a monster appears.

“Go on, then,” Hojo says, sounding gleeful. “Get started on that new generation.”

“You’re insane!” Cloud shouts, leaping out from behind the crate. “They aren’t even the same species!”

“Cloud, you dumbass!” Tifa whispers loudly, hand still reaching to grab him.

Hojo doesn’t seem surprised in the least by his sudden appearance. “Actually, their brain patterns are more similar to each other than to humans. I have reason to believe that they may be from the same evolutionary branch. It’s all very exciting; I may write a paper.”

“I’m going to stop you,” Cloud says, pointing his sword directly at Hojo’s throat. “Let her out!”

“How about no,” Hojo says, sounding bored.

“Get down!” Barret shouts, and Aerith and the red thing both hit the floor as gunfire breaks out over their heads.

Probably glass then, Tifa thinks irrelevantly as the cage shatters.

“You’re both idiots,” she mutters, giving up on the dubious cover of the crate. They’re lucky Aerith didn’t get cut to pieces.

“If you damage my specimens, I shall be very cross,” Hojo says.

He’s agreeing with Tifa. She kind of throws up in her mouth a little.

There’s a tense moment when the red thing shakes shards of glass out of its fur, fluid and feline and sending up all kinds of alarms in her hindbrain that scream ‘predator’.

It leaps, crossing an impossible distance, too fast for her to even be afraid.

And anyway, it lands right on Hojo, so it can’t be all bad.

For a weedy scientist guy, Hojo is a surprisingly skilled fighter. Or maybe just really lucky. She’s found that the worst rats in the slums seem to have nine lives. Whatever the reason, he kicks the red cat thing off and darts out the door, right past a still-gawking Tifa.

Idiot. That was a perfect opportunity to snap his scrawny neck!

“We’re here to rescue you,” Cloud says.

Aerith smiles. “This time, I needed it. Thank you, all of you.”

“Yes, thank you for the rescue, incidental as it was,” the red thing says.

Barret jumps about a foot in the air. “It talked!”

It looks down its nose at Barret, a neat trick for something on four legs. “I am as much a sentient being as you.”

“Right,” Barret says, sweating nervously.

“I am called Red XIII,” Red XIII says, glancing at the XIII branded into it—his? her?—left foreleg with disdain.

Cloud snorts. “And I’ve been called Specimen C. Just proves Hojo shouldn’t be allowed to name anything. My _name_ is Cloud.”

Red XIII looks him over for a long moment. “I see. In that case, my name is Nanaki. Now, if this is a rescue, perhaps we should commence our escape?”

“Good call,” Tifa says, deciding it’s best to just roll with this new weirdness in her life. “At least someone here has sense.”

They barely make it around the corner before they’re jumped by the Turks.

~*~

“Ow.”

“Tifa, you’re awake!”

“And regretting it,” she says, clutching her head. “Did you see what hit me?”

“Some bald Turk,” Cloud says. “He said you tried to disembowel his partner.”

“Tried? Damn, I thought I got him.”

“You’re kind of scary,” Cloud says.

“And don’t you forget it.” Tifa sits up—carefully—and blinks. “Are we in a prison cell?”

“More or less. We’re still in Hojo’s labs. This is where he keeps the specimens that can still move under their own power when he’s not actively torturing them.” 

“What a guy. Not that I’m complaining, but, why aren’t we dead?”

“The President is planning on blaming us for the Plate falling. We’re going to be publicly executed in the morning.”

“Bastard.” Tifa blinks. “So… do they turn the lights out at night? Some kind of sleep cycle?”

“No. The power’s out.”

“…this is Shinra Electric Power Company. The HQ is hooked up to eight different mako reactors. The power _can’t_ run out.”

“Six now,” Cloud reminds her.

“And it’s morning anyway,” Aerith shouts through the wall.

“Late afternoon, as near as we can tell,” Cloud confirms. “Nanaki can sense the position of the sun, or something. Maybe… maybe they decided to delay the execution.”

Barret’s disdainful snort is clearly audible.

“And maybe we shouldn’t be standing around waiting for them to decide to kill us,” Tifa says, standing up. The room spins for a moment, then settles. They’ve taken the cheap leather boots she bought from a questionable dealer in Wall Market, and the good gloves Master Zangan gave her.

Bastards.

But she isn’t a master martial artist for nothing. “Stand back,” she says, taking aim at the door. A side kick will probably generate the most force, and if she breaks her foot, well, Barret can carry her. She can’t do _all_ the work around here.

She almost falls on her face when the door swings open without resistance.

“It wasn’t even locked,” she says, glaring at Cloud.

He looks sheepish. _As he should_.

Her bare foot comes down in something wet and squishy. “Ugh, what’s that. Wait, I just remembered where I am, I don’t want to know.”

“Got a body over here,” Cloud says. “Looks like a stab wound.”

“That’s really interesting Cloud, but does he have anything useful on him? Gil? A key to the President’s office?”

“Bullets?” Barret shouts hopefully.

“Not the President’s office, but these could be keys to the cells,” Cloud says.

She takes the keys, letting Cloud commune with the body or whatever the hell he’s doing.

“I wonder what it could be,” he muses. “Shinra had some prototype weapons that were basically just balls of knives that spun really fast and could sometimes fly. I don’t know if they ever made that work, though.”

“Stupidest thing I ever heard,” Barret says.

“Shinra’s done way stupider things than that,” Tifa reminds him.

“Cloud?” Aerith asks. “What are you doing?”

Tifa spins around. He’s wandering off down the hall, towards the lab and away from stairs.

“Looks like it came from Hojo’s lab, whatever it was,” he calls over his shoulder. “We should investigate.”

Tifa blinks. Rapidly. “Um, no?”

“Excuse me,” Nanaki says. “But why are we following this thing? Shouldn’t we take advantage of this opportunity and escape?”

“I’m with him,” Barret says.

Cloud won’t be deterred, so like idiots, the rest of them drift along in his wake.

Hojo’s lab is a scene of carnage. There’s bodies everywhere, and a tank is ripped right out of the wall, solid steel bolts warped where they snapped under some extraordinary force, and an obvious, horrible trail of blood leads directly to a discreet door in the back.

“Some kind of service elevator?” Cloud speculates. “It looks like it went through here.”

“Which is why we _shouldn’t_ ,” Tifa says. “Unknown super-powered potential enemy running about? Let’s go in the _other_ direction.”

“They took our elevator key cards. And look, this one has the key card still in it.”

That… is actually a good point. “Damn,” Tifa says.

“There are windows,” Nanaki points out.

“I’m not jumping out any windows. Or off anything, ever again. Besides, we’re not talking about the 67th floor just for show. Unless you can fly, you’re not going out the window.” Barret pauses, eyes Nanaki. “You… can’t fly, can you?”

“So we’re agreed?” Cloud asks. “We’ll investigate?”

“This is a _terrible_ idea,” Tifa says, which isn’t exactly a disagreement.

“I’m in,” Aerith says. “I have a feeling this is important.”

“All aboard then,” Cloud says, waving them into the elevator.

Nanaki is the last in, hesitating at the threshold for a long moment. He looks like he’s seriously considering the window option. But in the end, he joins them, twining around their legs.

“Well this is cozy,” Aerith says brightly.

It takes a strong character to maintain a cheerful disposition when someone’s elbow is in your face.

“Can you reach the button?” Barret asks.

There’s a general shuffle and a number of knees and elbows in awkward places.

“It’s not working,” Aerith says. She must have been closest to the buttons.

“I believe you said there was no power?” Nanaki says. “Also, someone is standing on my tail.”

“Right,” Cloud says sheepishly. “I should have thought of that. Oh, hey! There’s an emergency door in the ceiling, we can climb!”

“This plan just keeps getting better and better,” Tifa mutters. “We’re going to discuss this later, and by discuss I mean I’m going to punch you until all the stupid leaks out. Or I feel satisfied, whichever comes first. Now give me a boost.”

“Um,” Cloud says.

After a few crushed toes, muttered apologies, and one entirely accidental foot in Cloud’s face, Tifa scrambles up on top of the elevator car, extending an arm to help Aerith pull herself up.

“Great, more wires,” Tifa says, eyeing the elevator cables with trepidation.

“Oh hey, a ladder,” Aerith says.

“Oh thank goodness.”

They both start climbing up, to clear some space for the others and to test the sturdiness of the ladder with their smallest, lightest members.

“Cloud, stop staring, you perv,” Tifa calls down without looking.

An embarrassed squeak confirms her suspicions.

There’s a lot of clattering and swearing, and she glances down in time to see Barret hand a grumbling Nanaki up to Cloud. Right, he probably doesn’t have the upper body strength to pull himself up.

…how’s he going to manage the ladder?

“Skinny fuckers,” Barrett grumbles, wriggling as he tries to squeeze his large frame through the narrow emergency exit.

“I think I have a door here,” Aerith announces.

Tifa scrambles up beside her, and Aerith braces her so she doesn’t fall while she pries the metal doors open enough so they can squeeze through. “We’re out!”

“You need another boost?” Barrett asks.

“I am not a piece of luggage,” Nanaki says. “Females, step back please.”

He crouches low and jumps almost ten feet straight up, landing neatly between Aerith and Tifa.

“Wow,” Barrett says. “Don’t suppose you could do that carrying me?”

Cloud is already climbing.

Barrett follows, cursing as his gun-arm hangs uselessly.

Once they’re finally all standing on the floor, they take a moment to just breathe.

“Ha!” Barret says. “Now that’s what I’m talking about!”

“What?” Cloud asks.

Barrett points. “Stairs.”

~*~

That damn blood trail continues up the stairs, and whatever the hell is making it Tifa does not want to know. A human body doesn’t have that much blood in it.

In case they can’t tell what a stupid idea it is to keep following it, there are corpses littering the floor all along the way, soldiers and executives and janitors, none of them spared.

They don’t see another living soul all the way up to the top floor. President Shinra’s office. It’s a monument to ostentatiousness, one massive room with gilded walls and rich red carpet and an enormous desk with a throne-like chair, and it’s easy to see why he and Don Corneo seem to understand each other so well.

Though the grandness is somewhat diminished by the President’s corpse slumped over the desk.

There’s a moment of stunned silence.

“I did not see that one coming,” Barret says finally.

“I know that sword,” Tifa says, fists clenched.

“It’s not the same sword,” Cloud says. “It’s a… replica, or something. I threw the real Masamune into the reactor when I killed Sephiroth.”

“ _You_? Kill _Sephiroth_?” a shrill voice cries.

What Tifa had taken for an ugly tan statue resolved itself into a portly, balding man in an ugly tan suit.

“…Palmer?” Cloud asks, frowning as he dredges his memory.

Maybe-Palmer tries to run past them, but Tifa and Barret grab his arms.

He struggles fruitlessly for a moment, then sags, almost taking them both down. “You must protect me! Sephiroth is here!”

“You lie,” Cloud says. “Sephiroth died in Nibelheim, years ago.”

“Tell the truth,” Barret says, leveling his gun at Palmer’s head.

He whimpers, crying in distress. “He’s looking for the Promised Land! He killed the President! He killed everyone!”

“I don’t think this guy is clever enough to lie,” Tifa says, jabbing his shoulder.

“Well, why didn’t ‘Sephiroth’ kill you, then?” Nanaki asks.

Palmer goggles at him.

Barret gives him a shake. “Answer the question.”

“I hid! Please don’t kill me!”

“I think he’s telling the truth,” Aerith says.

Tifa hardens her heart, but her shaking hands betray her distress. “It… it can’t be Sephiroth.”

Palmer takes advantage of her distraction, breaking free and bolting for the stairs.

“Just let him go,” Cloud says from where he’s examining the body. “He’s just a coward. But maybe not a lying coward. This time. It looks like the real thing. Here’s the nick where it got stuck on my ribs.”

Shaking her head at Cloud’s nonsense, Tifa investigates the dead Turks bodyguards. Hmm, this one looks about her size, and these boots are almost new. Excellent.

“Helicopter incoming,” Barret says.

“We’ve been here too long,” Tifa says. “Come on, Cloud. There’s nothing more we can do here.”

He hesitates, hovering over the cooling body of the most powerful person on the Planet. Former, anyway.

“Looks like our squirrelly little VP,” Barret says. “Though I suppose it’s ‘President’ Rufus, now.”

“We could introduce ourselves,” Cloud says.

Tifa’s mouth drops open, but nothing useful comes out.

“What kind of dumbass idea is that?” Barret asks. “Let’s split before he lands.”

“Seconded,” Aerith says.

“I’m already gone,” Nanaki says, flame-tipped tail disappearing down the stairs.

Tifa’s right behind the others, but Cloud is still lingering for some incomprehensible reason. “If Sephiroth really did survive, tracking him down has to be our first priority,” she says. “We can’t let him to do to anyone else what he did to Nibelheim.”

That finally seems to get through to him. “Right,” Cloud says. “Let’s go.”

The others have disappeared already, not that Tifa blames them one bit, but there’s only one way to go (the window isn’t actually an option, no matter what they told Nanaki).

They don’t run into a single guard the whole way, not even a lame robot.

“Well that was kind of anticlimactic,” Tifa says, peering out the elevator into the lobby. “Though it looks like they just relocated everyone to the lobby. The others just walked right into the middle of it. Looks like it's up to us to bail them out.”

Cloud isn’t even looking, busy poking around at the displays in the museum. “I have an idea.”


	3. Chapter 3

They make it out of the city on their stolen display vehicles, but run out of fuel somewhere in the middle of the dead zone.

“Guess we walk from here,” Cloud says. “Kalm shouldn’t be more than a few days away on foot.”

“I still think we should go back,” Barret says. “Warn them.”

“My mom’s smart,” Aerith says. “If she sees a hint of a blue suit, she’ll take Marlene and hide somewhere. She kept me safe all these years, she can do the same for Marlene.”

“We can’t bring Marlene with us,” Tifa says, gently. “Not across country for weeks, and definitely not if there’s a chance we’ll have to fight Sephiroth.”

Barret sighs. “We’ve never been apart for so long, not since I adopted her. She has nightmares where I never come back. Just like her parents.”

Aerith pats his shoulder soothingly. “My mom has a phone. We’ll pick up a PHS for you, you can call her every day.”

Barret definitely likes this idea, subtly signaled by how he punches the air and strides decisively off in a random direction. “I’ll call her the second we get there. Best time to Kalm, everyone!”

“This cannot be sanitary,” Nanaki says, placing his feet carefully on the blackened ground.

“It’s not pollution,” Aerith says, rubbing dirt between her fingers. “Not like from the old gasoline-powered engines. It’s just… lifeless. Everything’s been drained right out of it.”

“Hmm,” Nanaki says, nudging at a shriveled weed of some kind with his nose. “You’re right.”

“Now that you experts have conferred…?” Barret prompts impatiently.

“Oh hey, robots,” Cloud says. “Old Sweeper models. Those were being decommissioned when I first came to Midgar. I can’t believe those clunkers are still moving.”

“Not robots,” Barret says, grinning. “ _Bullets_.”

~*~

“This is interesting,” Aerith says. “I don’t remember ever seeing rain before.”

“Speak for yourself,” Nanaki says, looking as miserable as only a wet cat can. “My tail is going out.”

Cloud is sulking just as hard. “There’s rain dripping down the back of my pants. I think my butt’s going to freeze off.”

“It’s not even that cold,” Tifa says, not that she’s any happier. But at least she’s not whining about it. And apparently Cloud really has forgotten Nibelheim, because this is like a balmy summer’s day up in the mountains.

Barret is so far ahead of them he’s almost out of sight. “You can buy a tent when we get to Kalm,” he calls back over his shoulder.

But despite Barret’s best efforts, they can’t make the whole trip in one day. They finally find a bunch of tall shrubs, enough to keep out the worst of the wet, and spend an extremely miserable night out in the open.

At least the sun is out the next day, because stiff, damp clothes and no food do not make for happy travelers.

“What’s that?” Aerith whispers, ducking behind a tree and prompting the others to do the same.

A half dozen birds are pecking at the ground, probably looking for food.

“Are they wild chocobos?” Tifa asks. Her knowledge of wildlife begins and ends with Nibel wolves.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Barret says. “Chocobos aren’t purple. This must be some other kind of bird.”

“Those beaks look nasty. Should we kill them or try to go around?”

“If we kill them, we can eat them,” Nanaki says.

They all consider this.

“An excellent point,” Barret says, and charges the birds.

The birds split into two groups, showing an almost human intelligence as they flank the party. Their beaks are as razor sharp as Tifa predicted, but it’s the legs that turn out to be the real danger. Those things really pack a wallop, which they learn when Cloud takes a solid hit to the stomach and goes flying.

Nanaki’s the first to hit one, possibly because of the natural cat-bird relationship asserting itself. Leaping over the dangerous legs, he rakes powerful claws down one wing. The bird shrieks as it goes down, furiously pecking at his head.

Aerith is trying to pen two of them in with a circle of fire, and Tifa runs over to help her, keeping the birds back with fists and feet until the circle closes. Barret steps in and fills them full of bullets.

The rest of the flock runs off, leaving them with three dead birds.

“Nice moves there, SOLDIER,” Barret says, clapping Cloud on the back hard enough to almost send him sprawling.

“You guys had everything under control,” Cloud grumbles, rubbing his new bruise.

“It’s fine, Cloud’s going to clean them for us,” Tifa says. “I’ll find some water.”

“I’ll start the fire,” Aerith says.

“I’ll help,” Nanaki says.

“I’m right-handed,” Barret says, waving the gun and smirking.

“You’re all assholes,” Cloud mutters.

“Hey, there’s some nice, green grass over here,” Barret says. “Can we eat that?”

“I suppose it’s like a vegetable? So maybe?” Aerith asks.

Nanaki scoffs. “Humans can’t eat grass. How do none of you know this?”

“I don’t remember much before the labs and the slums,” Aerith says. “I was too young.”

“There’s pretty much just snow in Nibelheim,” Tifa says. “We don’t forage much.”

Cloud pauses his swearing long enough to shout, “Same with Gongaga!”

Nanaki raises an eyebrow.

“You’re making the fire all wrong,” Barret says. “You’ve got make a structure, a sort-of round lean-to. You, with the flaming tail, get over here.”

“This is undignified,” Nanaki complains, obligingly holding his tail under the pile of sticks.

“Maybe you want to eat this stuff raw, but none of us do. There’s nothing but coal mines where I come from, so I might not know much about scavenging for food but I do know fire. There, see? Perfect.”

“Whenever you’re ready, Cloud!” Tifa shouts.

“You could always help!” he shouts back.

“Not a chance.” 

~*~

Kalm’s a sleepy little town, as much under Shinra’s thumb as Midgar is, but there’s an inn and a restaurant and after her recent jaunt through the wilderness it’s the most beautiful thing Tifa’s ever seen.

They get some weird looks from the locals, because no one walks between cities if they can help it and they must look (and smell) pretty gross (not to mention there’s no good way of explaining Nanaki).

“We need food, beds, and clean clothes,” Tifa says, ticking items off on her fingers. “And camping supplies.”

“And a PHS,” Barret says.

“Right, and a PHS.” Tifa pats the pockets of her borrowed clothes, even knowing what she’ll find there. “Anyone have any money?”

Barret and Aerith are both slums residents like she is, no one has much money there, Nanaki obviously hasn’t got pockets, and Cloud…

Cloud looks almost unbearably smug.

“Okay, spill,” Tifa says.

He produces a massive, overflowing bag of gil, enough to buy the entire slums five times over. “Courtesy of President Shinra,” he says.

Barret guffaws, clapping him heartily on the back, and they quickly split the money and disperse on their various errands.

Tifa finds some gloves that are _almost_ as good as the ones she lost, a good pair of boots, and two sets of trousers that are loose enough not to inhibit her flexibility but hopefully sturdy enough to survive in the wild. Along that vein, she finds loose long-sleeve shirts for warmth and a cute leather vest to wear over them for support.

She models the look in front of the mirror, and tries a few experimental kicks and punches. Not bad. A little plain, but very functional, and she looks _great_ in a vest. She’ll definitely have to remember that.

“Very nice,” Aerith says, emerging from one of the other fitting rooms.

She’s added leggings under her dress, either for warmth or modesty and a pair of heavy, practical-looking boots.

“Cute,” Tifa says. “Pink looks good on you.”

“Thanks,” Aerith says, looking sad for a moment. “I got it to match my bow.”

The ribbon that holds that strange, white materia in her hair is, indeed, very pink. “It’s nice.”

“My boyfriend got it for me.”

“Bad break up?” Tifa ventures, watching Aerith’s uncharacteristically somber expression.

“He died,” she says, playing with the ribbon.

“Oh, I’m sorry.”

“He was missing for a long time, and then, one day…” Aerith taps her head, then wiggles her fingers as if to say ‘Cetra magic’. “I sent him letters, but I don’t think he ever got them.”

Tifa doesn’t know what to say, so she just gives her a hug.

“Cloud reminds me of him sometimes,” Aerith says into her shoulder. “He was a SOLDIER First Class, too. And he was also from Gongaga.”

Tifa pulls back, slowly. “Wait, what?” 

~*~

“I think we need to talk,” Tifa says, when they’re all warm and comfortable in the inn’s nicest room at Shinra’s expense. The money won’t last much longer, especially after Barret bought them each a PHS, but she’ll enjoy it while she can.

“I suppose so,” Barret says, considerably mellower now that he’s gotten a chance to talk to Marlene. “I don’t know what the future of Avalanche is now.”

“I joined Avalanche because I wanted to hurt Shinra,” Tifa confesses. “I didn’t care that much about saving the Planet. I just wanted them to suffer for what they did to Nibelheim, and to me.”

“I don’t know where you got the idea that I was any different,” Barret says.

“I just didn’t have anywhere else to go,” Cloud offers. “But if Sephiroth is really back…”

“We have to stop him,” Tifa says. “I won’t rest until he’s dead, for sure this time.”

“One last mission for Avalanche,” Barret says, nodding. “Let the others rest peacefully, knowing we got revenge for them _and_ saved the Planet.”

Aerith fidgets with her ribbon. “I should come with you.”

“None of this is _your_ fault,” Tifa says. “We provoked Shinra when we blew up the reactors. Somehow I doubt Sephiroth’s reappearance immediately after is a coincidence.”

“Palmer said he was talking about the Promised Land. That’s a Cetra thing. I feel… I feel like this is my responsibility. I’m the only Cetra left. There’s no one else.”

Tifa squeezes her hand. “You’re not alone. You have us.”

Aerith smiles a little, then looks down. “And… I know you may not want to hear this, but… I knew Sephiroth. A little. We grew up in the labs together. He was five years older than me, but, well, as you can imagine, there isn’t weren’t a lot of other people around to talk to. No one you’d _want_ to talk to, anyway. And Hojo was trying to change him into a Cetra, so he let him hang around my mom and me, in case something… rubbed off, I guess. It’s never worth trying to understand Hojo’s motives. But we never would have escaped without him. He created a distraction so we could get out. So I could get out. He was only twelve.”

“That was very brave,” Nanaki says. “Him for trying to help, and you for trying to get away. I’ve been Hojo’s prisoner for many years, and I never even tried to run.”

“I wouldn’t have,” Aerith whispers. “It was my mom’s idea. Hojo scares me. I’m sure he punished Sephiroth very severely.”

“You don’t ever need to be ashamed about being afraid of Hojo,” Cloud says. “He’s a monster. When he captured me, I was useless, I needed someone else to rescue me.” He frowns. “I think…”

Tifa isn’t at all ready to face the idea of a not-evil Sephiroth. “Cloud, tell Aerith everything you told me, about SOLDIER and Sephiroth and… and Nibelheim. She used to know a SOLDIER, she might be able to help with those holes in your memory.”

“Okay,” Cloud says, shrugging. “Where to start…”

“I just want to know what happened,” Aerith says, softly enough that Tifa can pretend she didn’t hear.

Cloud’s entire life story takes the rest of the evening and most of the next day.

“Well,” Barret says, thumping the bed with his fist. “Not that that wasn’t thrilling, but we probably shouldn’t stay here too much longer. It wouldn’t take more than a few hours for Shinra to get here by helicopter, and we aren’t exactly subtle.”

“Maybe we should wear disguises,” Tifa says. “We could cut Cloud’s hair, that would be a good start.”

“What? No!”

“A useless endeavor,” Nanaki says dryly, “as there is no good way to disguise _me_.”

“Good point,” Tifa says.

“I could, of course, part ways with you here. After all this time away, I just want to go home to Cosmo Canyon and see my family again. I owe all of you for setting me free, and I would be happy to accompany you that far and fight by your side, or see myself off. Whatever is most helpful to you.”

“We’re happy to have you along,” Cloud says quickly, still patting his hair defensively.

“Great,” Barret says. “We’re all best friends now. Anything else?”

“Materia,” Aerith says. “We should make sure it’s distributed as efficiently as possible.”

“Good idea,” Cloud says.

“I can’t use materia, and I don’t have any,” Tifa says. “I’ll start packing the bags?”

“Same here,” Barret says. “You sure we have enough bullets?”

“I picked up two mythril bangles at the shop,” Cloud says. “We used them in SOLDIER to carry materia, much easier than trying to juggle a bunch of them. As for materia, I had this ice and lightning on me when Tifa found me, and this restore was just lying around in the reactor.”

“Ooh, restore,” Aerith says. “Can I have that one? Cure spells are a specialty of mine.”

“Sure,” Cloud says. “Have a bangle, too. One is more than enough for my other two materia.”

“I am skilled with fire materia,” Nanaki says. “All my people are. But Hojo confiscated it.” He tosses his head, showing the empty materia slot in his collar.

“Here, take mine,” Aerith says. “I’ll just put my mom’s materia in with the restore, and then everyone’s set!”

Cloud frowns. “I don’t like the idea of you having nothing to fight back with besides your staff. Why don’t you take my other bangle? I forget I have materia half the time anyway.”

“Well, I mean, if you’re sure,” Aerith says. “I do match better now.”

“You all done accessorizing?” Barret asks.

“Yeah, yeah,” Cloud says. “Like you’ve got any room to talk with the way you go on and on about bullets.”

“That’s for my _weapon_.”

“And what do you think materia is?”

“So,” Tifa whispers, under the cover of that silly argument, “what do you think?”

“I’m not sure Cloud is who he thinks he is,” Aerith says, troubled.

“Exactly what I was thinking.”

They trade serious looks.

“Hey, Cloud,” Aerith says, interrupting him mid-word. “Did you know my boyfriend, Zack?”

“Yes. No.” He frowns. “Umm…”

Aerith takes his arm. “Let me tell you about him. Do you want to hear how we first met? It’s an amazing coincidence…” 

~*~

Cloud is quiet after Aerith tells him about Zack. Very quiet. Aerith isn’t much better, and Tifa has no idea what to do about any of it.

She’s so distracted that she almost trips over a hole in the ground. Once she’s actually paying attention, she can see that they’re everywhere. “Huh.”

“Weapons testing?” Barret suggests. “Maybe Shinra got bored of using its own citizens for target practice.”

“You are fortunate I decided to come along,” Nanaki says. “No human or human-creation made these, animals did.”

A little head pokes up out of one of the holes, and he pounces on it, narrowly missing when it ducks back underground.

“Please excuse me,” he says, ducking his head like he’s embarrassed. “Instinct can be difficult to ignore.”

Another head pops up, makes a little noise, then tosses a rock at the back of Barret’s head. He yelps.

“It’s so cute,” Tifa says.

“It’s so _dinner_ , you mean,” Barret says, gun-arm crashing into the space the creature had been. “Get back here!”

There are dozens of them now, still chittering and chucking pebbles, and Barret is leaping about and smashing at them with great enthusiasm and zero success. The rest of the party can’t tear their eyes away from the spectacle.

“Now what are they doing?” Tifa wonders aloud.

A dozen of them, tiny rat-like things with big bushy tails, have gathered behind Barret. They aren’t throwing things anymore, they just seem to be watching and waiting. Barret is thoroughly occupied with a lone creature that is clearly just messing with them.

“Perhaps we should step back,” Nanaki says.

“I completely agree,” Tifa says.

Barret doesn’t notice his peril until it’s too late, and a massive wave of water appears out of nowhere.

“Yahhh!” Barret shouts as he goes down.

The water sweeps through quickly, leaving Barret soaked but mostly unharmed, lying on the ground surrounded by puddles and a conspicuous absence of his prospective dinner.

Once they’re sure he’s okay, they fall all over themselves laughing. Aerith is smiling for the first time since her talk with Cloud, and Cloud himself is laughing so hard he’s having trouble staying upright.

“Yeah, yeah, very funny,” Barret says, stomping past them.

The effect is somewhat ruined by the way he squelches as he walks. 

~*~

As night falls, they see a cluster of buildings looming on the horizon.

“Should we see if they have space for friendly travelers?” Aerith asks.

“It’s that or watching Cloud try and pitch the tents again,” Tifa teases.

“Like you know what a rain fly is, either,” Cloud says. “And I didn’t see you offering to help.”

“We can always ask,” Tifa decides. “If they’re sketchy, or Shinra sympathizers, we’ll just move on.”

“Chocobos,” Cloud says, as they get closer. “I hate chocobos.”

“More than you hate sleeping on the ground?” Aerith asks pointedly.

“Uh, maybe Barrett should knock,” Tifa says. “We want to give the impression that we’re people capable of taking care of ourselves, not targets for robbery.”

“Hey!” Cloud protests.

Aerith giggles.

“I’m a SOLDIER, people are afraid of me,” Cloud sulks.

Barret knocks, and the door opens to reveal an older man in clothes that smell very strongly of chocobos.

“Yeah?”

“We’re travelers looking for a place to stay for the night,” Aerith says, offering him a sweet smile.  

Barrett tries to look harmlessly menacing.

“We can pay,” she offers.

“Well, why didn’t you say so? What have you got?”

They look at each other, then the humans dig into their pockets and produce a few gil.

“Hmm,” the man says. He takes it all. “That should just about do it. I’m William Greene, but most folks just call me Choco Billy.”

“ _The_ Choco Billy?” Barrett demands, voice cracking. “The one who breeds racing chocobos for the Golden Saucer tournaments?”

“That’s me! You like chocobo racing?”

“I grew up in Corel, I went to all the big competitions. I used to run book when I was a kid.”

Choco Billy laughs, clapping him on the back. “Always happy to meet a fan.”

“Drat, that was all my money,” Cloud whispers.

Aerith’s eyes sparkle. “Sucker.”

The small settlement consists of a large, sprawling house, an even larger chocobo stable, and a bunch of weird, round buildings.

“Silos,” Barrett says knowledgeably. “That’s where they keep all the special chocobo feed.”

“What about other feed?” Nanaki asks. “Or do you eat the chocobos?”

Barrett gave him an utterly scandalized look. “Of course not!”

There are chocobos running around everywhere, mostly yellow, but a few of the rarer blue and green varieties.

Choco Billy led them to the stables, first. “This here is my pride and joy,” he says proudly. “Thought you might like to see him, being such a fan and all.”

Barrett exclaims over the magnificent black chocobo, and Aerith giggles as it chews contemplatively on her braid.

Cloud hangs way back.

“So what have you got against chocobos anyway?” Tifa asks. She doesn’t really have strong feelings about chocobos; she doesn’t follow racing, and she’s only ridden them once or twice. She does prefer a form of transportation that doesn’t have a mind of its own, but they’ll do in a pinch.

“They don’t like me,” Cloud mutters darkly. “They always seem to think _I’m_ a chocobo.”

Right on cue, the chocobos all seem to notice him at once and start warking in welcome.

Eyeing his riotous blond hair, Tifa attempts to bite back a giggle.

“Oh, shut up,” Cloud mutters.

It takes some time to calm the chocobos down enough to let Cloud leave, and Choco Billy thinks it’s so funny he throws in a home-cooked meal.

When his sister, Chole, hears about that she whacks him with a spoon. “A little warning would have been appreciated!”

“So where are you folks headed?” he asks over dinner.

“We’re tracking someone,” Cloud says, trying for subtlety. It doesn’t suit him. “Long black cape, silver hair. Seen anyone like that?”

“As a matter of fact, I have. Headed into the Marshes, he was. You shouldn’t have to worry about him again. No one goes into the Marshes. Heh. Rather, no one comes _out_ of the Marshes.”

“Oh?”

“They’re full of monsters.”

“We aren’t afraid of monsters,” Barrett says.

“This one, you should be. The Midgar Zolom is a legend. Every once in a while, some idiot from Shinra comes to ‘clear out’ the swamp, never to return. He’s a great serpent, long enough to circle this whole property, and his mouth’s big enough to swallow a person whole! He’s devilishly fast, too, especially in that marsh, where the water bogs us humans down. He’ll eat you all before you even know he’s there.”

“Wow,” Cloud says.

“And even if you get lucky and he’s sleeping or in some other part of the Marshes, he’s got a whole family out there. Nothing so big and bad, but if I were a gambling man, I’d lay my money on him getting wind of your presence soon enough. Soon enough for him to eat you, that is.”

“But surely some people must get through the Marshes,” Tifa argues. “There’s a whole big Planet out there, after all.”

Choco Billy laughs. “Yeah, by air!”

“Is there no other way?” Tifa presses.

“Your only hope is to outrun him,” Chole says. “When we were kids, we used to take the chocobos to the Marshes, test them again Himself. The ones that made it all the way across and back, those were the ones we trained for the races.”

“That sounds suicidal,” Cloud said.

“Nah, it’s fun!” Chole said.

“Well, can we buy some chocobos, then?” Cloud asks.

Choco Billy snorts. “I’ve got a lame bird you can have for 50,000 gil.”

Barrett whistles.

“Can we barter?” Aerith asks.

Choco Billy gives their cheap clothes and secondhand packs a professional once-over. “For what?”

“Information. Did you hear President Shinra has been assassinated?”

“Everyone’s heard that. It was on all the news channels.”

“Did they say that it was the former General Sephiroth?”

His eyes go wide, and he leans forward. “You know, they might have forgotten to mention that. All right. For the full story, I’ll _loan_ you a couple of chocobos. Mind, once you get them to the other side of the Marsh, set ‘em free. They know the way home. They won’t go through the Mines, anyway.”

It’s more than generous, and they don’t have any other options at the moment.

Aerith turns out to be a really good storyteller, she knows just where to add a few embellishments, and it’s a pretty fantastical tale even without.

“Definitely worth a loan,” Choco Billy pronounces when she’s done. “But remember, if you steal my chocobos, I’ll hunt you down and make you wish you’d never been born.”

“Get in line,” Nanaki mutters, quietly enough that he doesn’t hear. 

~*~

The Marsh is dreary. Grey trees rise high over their heads, blocking out the sun, and their chocobos mince along through almost a foot of water, looking sulky.

Not as sulky as Nanaki, who grumbles to himself nonstop about wet feet, which he started up just as soon he stopped grumbling about Choco Billy trying to lend him a chocobo, too.

“Well, this isn’t so bad,” Cloud says. “It’s nice not to have to walk for a while.”

“Now you’ve done it,” Tifa says. “You’ve jinxed us.”

“That’s not a real thing,” Cloud says.

Not even a full second later, Cloud’s chocobo squawks and leaps forward, almost unseating him in the process.

“Told you,” Tifa says, clinging to her chocobo as it struggles to outpace Cloud’s.

She makes the mistake of glancing down, so sees the gleaming red eye almost as big as her chocobo glaring out from under the water.

“Holy shit!” Barret shouts. Obviously he’s seen it, too.

The massive serpent undulates easily through the marsh, intent on its prey, but the chocobos, who are quite understandably freaking the fuck out, are faster.

“Good chocobo,” Aerith says, stroking her chocobo’s neck.

“Everyone hang on!” Cloud shouts, ducking under a branch.

“You think?” Tifa shouts back.

Nanaki’s moving so fast he seems to be running on top of the water. That’ll please him.

Barrett’s chocobo stumbles over something in the muck, almost unseating him. “Watch it!”

The chocobo warks indignantly.

“Are we almost there?” Tifa shouts.

There’s a moment of tense, awkward, running-for-our-lives-in-a-random-direction silence.

Barrett swears vividly.

“Nanaki, can you smell anything?” Cloud asks.

Nanaki, coated in mud from the top of his head to the tip of his claws, gives Cloud a disdainful glare. “Yes. I smell _marsh_.”

They careen through an especially thick stand of trees, and now glimpses of mountain can clearly be seen in the gaps between the remaining trees.

“My keen tracking senses say we should go that way,” Nanaki says.

“Oh, you’re funny,” Cloud says.

The zolom retreats when they cross onto dry land, which is a little surprising.

At least, until they reach the entrance and see a massive zolom, perhaps even the Legendary Midgar Zolom, pinned on a tree like some monstrous kabob. Tifa looks at it from a couple of different angles, and still has no idea how that could possibly have happened.

“What the actual fuck.” Barret says.

Only Cloud is unimpressed. “Couldn’t he have just carved ‘Sephiroth was here’ into the rocks like a normal person?” 

~*~

“Maybe this isn’t such a good idea,” Tifa says, peering into the gloom of the caves. And she thought the Marshes were dark. “Do you think we could just go over?”

“It doesn’t look so bad,” Aerith says cheerfully. “Besides, Nanaki can lead the way.”

“I’m not a torch,” Nanaki grumbles, but sets off anyway.

There are immediate problems with this arrangement. Only the first two people behind him benefit from the light, everyone else is still tiptoeing through the dark. So they try taking turns.

“Barrett, you don’t get to walk right behind Nanaki,” Cloud says after only a few seconds. “You’re blocking all the light.”

“Whose idea was this again?” Tifa asks, barking her shin against a protruding rock.

Aerith doesn’t seem to be having any trouble. Maybe it’s a Cetra thing.

They stumble along for an hour or so before they emerge into a decent-sized cavern, lit by colorful, glowing crystals in the walls and floor.

“What is that?” Aerith asks. “It’s so pretty!”

“It’s proto-materia,” Barrett says. “We had some in the mines in Corel, too. It means there’s a mako pool nearby.”

“In Nibelheim, too,” Tifa says. “Do you remember, Cloud? There was a mako fountain on the path up to the reactor.”

“Umm… maybe?”

“Shinra couldn’t use it for fuel like they could mako, and it’s not as powerful as materia, so they mostly left it alone. Couldn’t use it to make a profit.” Barret sighs. “We used to take tourists through some of the caves, after the mines started to dry up. It’s probably gone, now. Destroyed along with everything else when the reactor blew.”

There’s an awkward silence.

“Well, at least it’s lighter now,” Tifa says.

“Right,” Aerith says. “And so many colors! It’s like a garden made of mako.”

They walk until they come to a smaller cavern with barely any proto-materia to light it. It does have one saving feature, however.

“Water!” Tifa shouts, running to the small spring. “I don’t know about everyone else, but this drying muck is itching like _crazy_.”

“Agreed,” Aerith says, pushing up her sleeves and splashing her face. “Cold, cold, cold.”

Even Nanaki seems interested in a little external aid in rinsing out his fur.

“This is going to take more than a few splashes,” Tifa concludes quickly. “And I want to wash out my clothes, too. We should make camp here.”

“There has to be hours of daylight left, we can’t stop yet,” Cloud says, but not like he thinks he’s going to win this argument.

“What does the position of the sun matter when we’re underground?” Aerith points out sensibly, already wrestling with the mud-soaked ties on her dress.

“We could be down here for a long time,” Nanaki agrees, holding his tail high as he wades into the shallows. “I’d rather be clean.”

Tifa steps out of her pants.

“What are you doing?” Cloud yelps, going bright red and turning his back. “I’m standing right here!”

“Don’t they have communal baths where you come from?” Barret asks.

“Well, yeah, but… there’s still set times for men and women!” Cloud insists. “It isn’t proper.”

“Good old Nibelheim, making everything unnecessarily complicated,” Tifa says, jumping into the water. “So cold!”

“Wait for me!” Aerith says. “Do you think we could use fire materia to warm it?”

Cloud reaches out blindly until he finds Barrett’s sleeve. “Come on, we’ll go set up the tents. Over there.”

“I’m not getting in my sleeping bag covered in slime,” Barrett protests, but allows himself to be drags away. “Well, I do have to unscrew this arm. A little blood spatter won’t hurt it, but I try not to actually bathe with it.”

“Are you coming, Nanaki?” Cloud calls, still pointedly examining the rock at his feet.

“Nude humans hold no particular interest to me,” the cat says dryly. “I find clothing a puzzling convention anyway.”

Aerith giggles.

It’s too cold to linger, but Tifa checks Aerith’s hair for vestiges of marsh, and Aerith does the same for her.

“It’s safe for delicate eyes now,” Tifa calls out before ducking into her tent, looking for her spare clothes.

“Very funny,” Cloud says. 

~*~

The proto-materia is pretty enough, but they quickly find a major drawback to traveling in the Mines.

“I keep hearing a noise,” Tifa says.

“As do I,” Nanaki says.

“Yeah,” Cloud says. “A sort of… clicking.”

“Bugs!” Barret shrieks, charging back around the corner. “Bugs everywhere!”

“Oh, I hate bugs,” Tifa moans.

“They’re coming out the walls!” Barret shouts, grabbing Cloud and—no other word for it—hiding behind him.

“I’m not bothered by bugs,” Aerith says, sticking her head around the corner. She pulls back quickly. “Except when there’s hundreds of them. Also snakes. Let’s run.”

Nanaki and Aerith lay down cover fire and ice respectively as the rest of them sprint by.

Tifa could live a long time without ever seeing that many bugs in one place.

“Oh look, more of them,” Cloud says.

Tifa jumps, spinning around, but there’s nothing crawling towards her with too many legs. Just Turks.

Including a bald one.

“Hey, how’s your partner?” she asks, smirking.

It’s hard to tell behind the sunglasses, but he definitely looks annoyed. Good.

“Reno’s still in the hospital!” the little blond Turk shouts. “Thanks to you, we’re shorthanded, and I had to go out in the field early!”

“Oh, boohoo,” Barret says. “Don’t you have lives to ruin somewhere?”

“Where’s Tseng?” Aerith asks.

“What, we’re on a first name basis with these assholes now?” Barret demands. “They’re the ones who dropped the Plate and killed all those people!”

“No, you did that,” the still-unnamed bald-sunglasses-wearing-guy says.

“That lie’s not going to work with us,” Cloud says. “We were there.”

“Yeah,” Tifa says, cracking her knuckles. “You try any of that kind of shit again, I’ll make sure your partner has someone to keep him company.”

“He’s looking forward to seeing you again,” the male Turk says. “He says he has a new weapon he can’t wait to show you.”

“I’ll shove it up his ass,” Tifa says, smiling with all her teeth.

“We don’t have time for this,” the female Turk says. “We have to get to Junon before Sephiroth disappears again.”

“Elena,” a new voice says, “please stop telling the enemy our plans.”

The blond, Elena apparently, blushes over her whole face. “Sir! S-sorry, sir. Won’t happen again.”

“Rude, you have your orders,” the newcomer says.

Sunglasses—or Rude, she supposes she should call him—nods. “Boss.”

Elena and Rude both slink away to do whatever it is Turks do. Kidnap people, probably.

“Ah, Aerith,” the third one says.

“Tseng.”

“I see you managed to escape Shinra now that everyone’s busy with Sephiroth,” he says.

She nods.

“Well, I suppose I won’t be seeing much of you, now.”

“I suppose not.”

He inclines his head. “Well… take care then.”

And then he leaves.

“…what was that all about?” Cloud asks.

“I hate Turks,” Barret grumbles.


	4. Chapter 4

“Let’s never go into a cave again,” Tifa says, flopping onto the grass and basking in the weak afternoon sun.

“I don’t know,” Aerith says. “I’ve lived in Midgar almost my entire life, most of it under the Plate. It’s still strange for me to look up and see the sky.” She gives a wry half-smile. “I used to be afraid of it, actually. I imagined that I could fall off the world without something above me.”

“I’d like nothing more than to go back home and re-open the mines,” Barret says.

Nanaki shrugs. “My people used to live in caves before we were driven out by the Gi. It’s my most cherished dream to reclaim them and rebuild our civilization.”

Tifa looks at Cloud.

He shrugs. “I don’t have any particular feelings about caves either way.”

“Well, now that that’s settled, let’s get moving,” Barret says.

They’ve only been walking for a few hours when they see something looming in the distance.

“Please tell me that’s not more mountains,” Tifa says.

Barret squints into the setting sun. “Uh… looks like it’s just Fort Condor. That's a Shinra outpost.”

“Oh, right. Didn't I hear Shinra was having some trouble there?”

“Best not to risk it,” Cloud says. “I don’t know what was going on with the Turks back there, but if we encounter Shinra forces in any greater numbers you can bet they’ll be right after us.”

“Fair enough. Though seriously, what _was_ up with those Turks?” Tifa asks. “Aerith, wasn’t that the same Turk who had you on the helicopter? Who took you back to Hojo? You acted like you know him.”

“I do. The slums aren’t _that_ big, and it didn’t take the Turks very long to find me after my escape. But by that time Hojo was distracted with building the SOLDIER program, and he wasn’t that interested in me since I was only half-Cetra. So the Turks just kept an eye on me, made sure I didn’t get out of Midgar or get killed. Tseng was… sort of like a bodyguard, I guess. He gave me presents for my birthday.”

“Turks are so weird,” Barret says, which is pretty much exactly what Tifa was thinking.

“I’m not saying Shinra is a good company,” Aerith says, “because it’s obviously not. But there are good people there.”

“This is the same guy who kidnapped you,” Tifa reminds her. “And those other Turks are the ones who dropped the Plate.”

“I know. I guess I’m just saying that… Tseng wouldn’t have given that order. It wasn’t his idea. Maybe he went along with it, and that’s a terrible thing, but he’s not the kind of guy who’d give that kind of order.”

Tifa privately doubts this very much, but it doesn’t matter right now, anyway. “So, who wants to play another round of ‘Guess Who’ with Cloud’s brain?”

Cloud groans. “I hate this game.”

~*~

“This forest seems like a good place to make camp,” Tifa says. “The trees will provide us some cover.”

“We can make it to Junon tonight,” Barret argues predictably.

“You just don’t want to set up the tent again,” Aerith teases.

“One, the sun rising over a free Wutai!”

“What was that?” Nanaki asks.

“I don’t know, but I have a really, really bad feeling all of a sudden,” Cloud says.

“Two, Shinra ground into the dirt where they belong!”

“Just a normal bad feeling, or a flashback brain-melt quasi-memory bad feeling?” Tifa asks, trying to find where that voice is coming from.

“More the second one,” Cloud says. “I think we should run.”

 “Three, the ninja who’s going to make it all happen!”

 Even though she’s watching for it, Tifa catches only a quick glimpse of the girl—ninja?—who sprints through their camp and disappears into the woods.

 “That… wasn’t so bad,” Aerith says, lowering her staff after a minute of tense silence.

 “Wasn’t so bad?” Barret protests. “Little shit stole my tent!”

 ~*~

They find the tent the next morning, strung up between two trees by sticking branches right through the fabric, and with a note pinned to it.

“This stinks. Don’t you ever bathe?” Barret reads, then drops the note on the ground and jumps on it. “It’s not even your tent! I’ll bathe _you_! In bullets!”

“This is going to be a really long day, I can already tell,” Tifa says, face in her hands.

What had seemed like such a nice forest yesterday evening, strange ninja notwithstanding, is something else entirely by day.

“The trees are attacking me!” Cloud shouts, sprinting by and hiding behind Tifa.

“Um,” Tifa says.

Right on his heels, six or so… things… are marching inexorably onwards. They do look very much like very small trees with prehensile roots for limbs.

“UMM,” Tifa says again.

“So do we… kill them?” Barret asks, uncertainly.

They stop marching, then start _throwing bolts of lightning_.

“What the fuck!?” Barret shouts, cursing as his gun-arm starts sparking. “Kill it kill it kill it!”

Tifa isn’t touching those things, it’d probably be like sticking her fist in an electrical socket, so she’s left throwing sticks at the damn things while Aerith and Nanaki work their magic.

Lazy ass Cloud doesn’t lift a damn finger the whole time.

“What was I supposed to do with a sword?” he asks, when the tree-things are gone and she's free to sock him. “It’s made of metal!”

Whatever. It’s got a handle, hasn’t it?

“You should have more respect for the forest, Shinra scum!” mystery ninja shouts from somewhere unseen.

“Oh no, she’s back,” Cloud groans.

“Shut your mouth, spiky-headed jerk! You wanna go?”

“Damn right!” Barret shouts, jumping in to the fray. “That was my damn tent you destroyed for no goddamn reason. Damn you!”

“Ha! Should have taken better care of your stuff, old man!”

“Who are you calling old? You’re what, ten?”

“A ninja never reveals her true age!”

“Barret, I’m not sure this is a good idea,” Tifa says, and is ignored.

The mystery ninja throws her giant shuriken, close enough that Barret’s shirt moves in the wind of it’s passage… and slicing through his belt.

“Goddamn it!” he shouts, grabbing his pants before he loses them. “I’ll kick your skinny ass into the ground!”

“My ass is not skinny!” the ninja shouts back. “I’m the most beautiful white rose of Wutai!”

“Get over here White Rose, and I’ll teach you to respect other people’s stuff!”

“I think maybe we just have to let this happen,” Aerith says, looking far more amused than is probably warranted given that they’re actually under attack. Sort of.

“Sounds good to me,” Cloud says, settling back with his hands behind his head to watch the show.

Well, if that’s the way everyone else feels. “Fair enough,” Tifa says, opening her pack. “Anyone want a snack?”

That ninja girl may have a big mouth, but she’s _fast_. She’s not exactly dodging bullets, but somehow she’s never where Barret is aiming.

“Well, this has been real fun,” she says eventually, executing an impressive flip in mid-air.

Tifa would give it an eight out of ten.

Ninja girl throws up two fingers in a V, winks, and disappears into the forest.

“Yeah, you’d better run!” Barret calls after her.

“You know she was just playing with you, right?” Cloud asks.

“Yeah, whatever, didn’t see you… where the fuck is my wallet!?”

~*~

“You’re pretty scared of me, huh,” ninja girl says, jumping out of a tree while Tifa’s trying to get a little privacy.

Tifa sighs. “Look, it’s sort of funny how much you’re annoying Barret right now, but we’re trying to do something important here.”

“Oh, you can go ahead and pee. I won’t mind.”

“…okay, not the point.”

“Want to fight?”

“Not really.”

“Because you’re scared?”

“Look, would you just go away?”

Tifa limps back into camp over an hour later.

“Damn shuriken’s poisoned,” she mumbles, before collapsing more or less in Aerith’s lap.

~*~

The poison leaves her with pins and needles for over an hour, then the effects fade. Her wallet’s also gone.

Tifa’s going to call this one a tie. The poison wasn't fatal, and she’d moved her money after Barret’s little misfortune. She's not an idiot.

“I’m gonna leave,” ninja girl says, appearing right in the middle of camp. Such are their lives now that no one even blinks.

“Go ahead,” Cloud says. “I can’t wait. Don’t let a possessed tree root electrocute your annoying ass on the way out.”

She humphs and stomps her foot, and a _giant hole_ opens up in the ground under his feet.

“Take that, SOLDIER! Wutai rises again!” she shouts, leaving the rest of them to try and dig Cloud out of the ground.

“You know you’re the one who said she was dangerous in the first place,” Tifa reminds him. "So that was pretty dumb."

“Yeah, yeah. Just get me out of here before those root things come back.” 

~*~

“I admit that I might have been mistaken about the wisdom of camping in this forest,” Tifa says, flattening herself on the ground as a bunch of giant purple birds with fucking boomerangs swoop down on them.

“They don’t even have thumbs!” Cloud whines from where a boomerang has him pinned to a tree.

He’s lucky it only caught his sleeve.

“I think you need my help,” ninja girl says, suddenly standing beside Aerith. “I accept materia as payment.”

“Not a chance,” Aerith says pleasantly.

They scuffle over the materia, but Aerith didn’t survive to adulthood in the slums _just_ because of her mysterious Turk bodyguard.

Somehow the ninja still makes off with her left boot, of all things.

“This is really becoming annoying.”

~*~

“You may not have my materia,” Nanaki says, the moment ninja girl appears again. “But you are welcome to come with us if you wish.”

“All right! I’ll go with you, then!”

“Wonderful. Just… stop stealing our things.”

“You bet!”

“What’s your name, human?”

Tifa blinks and misses it, but suddenly Nanaki is soaking wet and ninja girl is back-flipping away, cackling.

“Is this forest ever going to end?” Barret moans.

~*~

Ninja girl is waiting for them when they finally emerge from the other side of the forest.

“Name’s Yuffie,” she says. “Yuffie Kisaragi! I’m a world-famous materia hunter and the Princess of Wutai!”

“Please go away,” Cloud begs.

“Nope, I’m going with you,” she says. “Here, you can even have your stuff back.”

“Deal,” Aerith says, reaching for her boot.

“Aww, Aerith,” Cloud whines.

“What about my goddamn tent?” Barret demands.

~*~

By the time they finally get to Junon, Yuffie has grown on Tifa a little. There’s a serious person underneath her frivolous and really very annoying presentation, and Tifa can respect that person.

Barret still hasn’t realized that yet, but when Yuffie winds him up and gives Tifa a big wink behind his back, well, she has to remember that she’s supposed to be a grown-ass woman and not to laugh at him.

Too much.

Where he can see.

Anyway, Aerith is totally on the same page, and Tifa can barely look at her half the time, afraid she's going to actually laugh in Barret's face.

But even Barret can’t deny her skill, so it seems Yuffie is here to stay.

“Just until I find better prospects,” Yuffie assures them all. “I’m a serious materia hunter.”

Tifa suspects she’s just lonely. She doesn’t know much about geography, but she vaguely remembers seeing bulletins about the Wutai War on the news, with pictures. It must be very far from here.

“I think we should split up,” Barret says, the minute they get through the door. “Boys and girls.”

“How about ‘men and women’?” Tifa asks sweetly.

“Right,” Barret says, edging away. “Come on, guys.”

“Why are we going towards the ocean?” Nanaki complains. “I hate the water.”

“So,” Yuffie says brightly. “Now what?”

“We’re looking for signs that Sephiroth’s been through here,” Tifa says.

The smile drops right off her face, and now Tifa can see that serious young woman she knew was in there somewhere. “The Silver Demon?”

Right. Wutai War.

Tifa wants to kick herself.

“One of the Shinra execs saw someone they claim is Sephiroth assassinating the President a few weeks ago,” Aerith says. “We didn’t see it ourselves, but we have reason to believe it was Sephiroth’s sword, and we’ve been following the trail of a silver-haired man in a black coat. It _could_ be someone else—”

“—and it could be the Demon,” Yuffie finishes. She fakes a smile. “Sounds like a job for the Materia Princess!”

“We’re just looking for clues,” Aerith says. “We don’t actually expect to find him lurking around Junon somewhere.”

“We could start by looking for clues in that restaurant,” Yuffie says hopefully. “The sign says they have real seafood.”

Tifa and Aerith agree that that sounds like a sensible idea, and they find a quiet corner table.

“What’s with the materia thing, anyway?” Tifa asks. “I thought normal people can’t use materia.”

“Not around here, maybe,” Yuffie says. “In Wutai, it’s part of ninja training. Or it’s supposed to be. Shinra took every scrap of materia they could get their grubby paws on during the war, and now there’s nothing left. So I’m going to steal it all back! I have two so far.”

“Poison,” Tifa says through clenched teeth, maybe still a little bitter about that.

“Yep, in my weapon!” Yuffie says, without a trace of shame. “The other’s an Earth materia, really rare. I’m sure I’ll find more if I stick with you guys. You obviously lead interesting lives.”

“There are materia shops around here,” Tifa points out. “Have you tried buying some?”

Yuffie gives her a blank look. “Why would I do that?”

“Just don’t steal this one, please,” Aerith says, tapping her white materia. “My mom gave me this before she died.”

“Oh, you guys can keep yours,” Yuffie says. “For now. If we’re really going up against the Demon, we’ll need all the help we can get.”

“Have you… ever faced him?” Tifa asks. “I tried to attack him once, and lasted about five seconds.”

“Oh no,” Yuffie says. “I wanted to fight, but my dad wouldn’t let me. He said warriors have to be at least double-digits, and the war ended when I was nine.”

“Sorry?” Tifa offers.

“Well, I’ll make up for it now,” Yuffie says, rolling her eyes when Aerith pays the bill _and_ leaves a tip. “Lame. So how do we do this? Shake down people for information? Bust some heads?”

“We could start by asking,” Aerith says.

“Then bust some heads after,” Tifa stage-whispers.

Yuffie chuckles.

“Honestly, I don’t know if we’re going to find anything down here,” Tifa says. “This kind of reminds me of the Midgar slums, complete with Plate. All the people we actually need to talk to are probably up there.”

“Well, let’s go then,” Yuffie says. “We can climb up easily enough.”

“No, no climbing,” Tifa says with a shudder. “Look, there’s an elevator over there.”

“It’s guarded,” Yuffie says skeptically.

“Leave it to me,” Aerith says.

Five minutes and ten gil later, they’re standing in some kind of Shinra barracks.

“Well, that was easy,” Tifa says.

“You just have to know how to talk to people,” Aerith says virtuously.

“You could have just knocked them out,” Yuffie says.

“Maybe, but it was your money, so no big loss to me,” Aerith says.

“What? Hey!”

Tifa laughs. “You brought that one on yourself, Materia Princess.”

After a second, Yuffie starts laughing, too. “Okay, you got me. This time!”

“What’s so funny?” Cloud asks.

Tifa turns, and there are the three men, soaking wet and battered and looking entirely miserable.

“…wow,” Yuffie says. “Can’t leave you boys alone for a second.”

“Shut it, brat,” Barret mutters, without any heat behind it.

“There was a girl, and then there was a water monster, and then we rode a dolphin,” Cloud says. “It was a whole big thing.”

“Hey!”

They all startle when a man in a Shinra uniform comes barreling towards them.

“What are you all doing out of uniform? President Rufus will be here any minute! Get moving!”

He keeps going, and they all look at each other.

“I’m embarrassed to have been captured by these people,” Nanaki says.

“Maybe we should disguise ourselves,” Cloud says. “No one will suspect anything.”

“And what am I supposed to do, walk around on my hind legs?” Nanaki asks dryly.

Barret shuffles his feet. “You have to have all your original limbs to make it into the army.”

“No one’s going to mistake me for a soldier,” Aerith says.

“Fine, fine,” Cloud says. “Tifa and I will go, she could pass for a soldier.”

“Excuse me? Shinra doesn’t let women into the army.”

“So?”

Tifa’s gapes, too pissed to decide where to start.

“Uhh…” Barret says, refusing to look at her and obviously struggling for words.

Yuffie and Aerith look like they’re trying not to laugh.

“I’ve missed something,” Nanaki says.

Cloud finally tunes into the atmosphere in the room and gives her a puzzled look.

Tifa slowly, deliberately, crosses her arms under her chest.

Cloud flushes. “I just meant that you were… muscular and… and things,” he babbles. “The uniforms are really baggy and uncomfortable. I—”

“—should probably quit before you dig yourself in deeper,” Barret advises.

“…yeah.”

“I’ll go with you,” Yuffie says. “I’m still flat-chested as a boy. Here, someone hold my shuriken.”

She hands it to Aerith, who hands it to Tifa.

“Someone has to keep an eye on you two,” Aerith says. “I’ll tuck my hair under the helmet.”

“Um, okay,” Cloud says, studying the floor with apparent fascination.

“The rest of us will find somewhere to hide,” Tifa says. “Good luck, everyone.”

“You, too,” Aerith says, leaning up to kiss her cheek.

“Uhh,” Tifa says.

Aerith winks and ducks into the changing room.

“Humans are very confusing,” Nanaki says.

~*~

“Hey stranger,” Tifa says, sneaking up behind Cloud.

He jumps about a foot in the air.

“Tifa! What are you doing here?”

“Uh, stowing away? Sephiroth assassinated the last President; in the absence of other leads, it seemed reasonable to stick by the new one. Why, what are you doing here?”

He blushes. “I had to do a parade! And then a private show for Rufus!”

Both of Tifa’s eyebrows go up. “Oh really?”

“Not like that!” he squeaks, going even redder. “Drill team stuff! When did you get such a dirty mind?”

Tifa’s amusement fades. “You don’t really know me, Cloud. And we haven’t seen each other for years.”

“Right,” he says. He shuffles his feet. “So, uh… you and Aerith?”

She pats his shoulder. “Maybe-possibly a thing. I think she’s worried about how you’ll take it.” She summons up a grin. “And you did declare your undying love for me.”

“I was five! That was ages ago!”

“And Aerith?”

“Don’t you two talk to each other?” Cloud asks, slumping. “She already talked to me. She said it was weird, what with me sometimes thinking I’m Zack and everything. It’s not fair to either of us, not knowing if our feelings are real or not.”

“Yeah,” Tifa says, and squeezes his shoulder. They weren’t before, but she’d like to be friends now, if they could be.

Cloud sighs. “I do get it. When I first saw her, it was like she was the most amazing girl in the world. Which she is! But…”

“She really loved Zack a lot,” Tifa offers. “He must have loved her, too.”

“Yeah, he did. This is just… really weird sometimes.”

“No kidding.”

They lean over the railing and watch the waves companionably for a while.

“So,” Cloud says. “Have you always… you and Aerith?”

Tifa rolls her eyes. “If you’re trying to ask if I’ve always liked girls, the answer is yes. You’re not the only one who couldn’t wait to get out of Nibelheim. Judgmental assholes.”

“It was a shitty place,” Cloud says.

“Yep.”

“…I wish it was still there.”

“Me too. I feel cheated of my opportunity to show off how successful I’ve been.”

“You’re a penniless terrorist on the run from Shinra.”

“And damn proud of it. Throw in a maybe-someday girlfriend, and I’m pretty much set.”

“You know, you’re right. I didn’t make it into SOLDIER, probably, or if I did it was in a very left-handed sort of way, and I didn’t come back to whisk you away to life in the big city, and I’ll never have a chance to stick it to all those assholes back home, but… things are okay. For once. Finally.”

Right on cue, an alarm starts to blare.

“This one’s on you,” Tifa says.

He sighs. “Yeah, okay.”

Most of the troops are running towards Rufus’s private suite of cabins, but the smell of blood is coming from the cargo hold.

“Figures,” Tifa says. “Barret and Nanaki are hiding down there.”

“Of course,” Cloud says.

Aerith and Yuffie join them by the time they reach the steps.

“They’re all hiding,” Yuffie says. “Baby Shinra only cares about his own skin, big surprise there.”

“This is starting to look really familiar,” Aerith says, following the trail of mangled corpses.

Tifa catches herself holding her breath as they open the door to the engine room.

There’s a man in red engineer’s coveralls on the opposite side of the room, the only one still standing in a room full of bodies. She studies his back, trying to remember if he’s tall enough to be Sephiroth, to judge whether all that hair could fit under that cap…

“Sephiroth, is that you?” Cloud demands, boldly stepping forward. You almost can’t see his hands shaking.

The engineer turns…

…and collapses. He’s dead.

“Wait, where is he?” Barret demands, looking around. “Damn it, there’s no one here!”

That’s when things start to get really weird.

“Look,” Aerith hisses, elbowing her sharply.

Tifa rubs her sore ribs automatically, but her hand freezes when Sephiroth _rises up out of the deck plating_.

“The hell?” she breathes. “Is he a ghost? Is that a possibility?”

“I don’t know,” Aerith whispers.

“What do you want?” Cloud asks.

Sephiroth blinks. He has the look, the ankle-length silver hair, the cat-green eyes, the proliferation of black leather. But there’s… something wrong. Even allowing for the circumstances, the Sephiroth of her memories is a giant, face twisted and monstrous, menace practically suffusing the air around him.

This… person… is none of that.

“Who are you?” he asks, blinking at Cloud. His eyes don’t seem to be focusing.

“I’m Cloud. I… killed you?”

“It’s time,” the Sephiroth-thing says, and flies up into the air and, presumably, right off the ship.

“Oops, look sharp,” Yuffie says, as a giant tentacled something sprouts up out of the deck.

“I have no idea what is happening right now,” Tifa laments.

~*~

It says something about Shinra that no one comes to investigate their fight, not even when Yuffie very unwisely casts her quake spell and almost cracks the hull.

“What was that?” Yuffie asks, when whatever-it-is has finally stopped wriggling. “Did it have something to do with Sephiroth?”

“How should I know?” Barret asks. “No one told me that bastard could fly.”

“Or walk through walls. Or at least deck plating,” Tifa says.

“He can’t,” Cloud says. “At least, I don’t think so. There’s something more going on here.”

“Gee, nothing gets past you,” Tifa says.

~*~

They spend the rest of the trip speculating, but none of their theories make any sense, and maybe-Sephiroth doesn't reappear to give them any new ideas.

It's almost criminally easy to sneak off the boat. Tifa is tempted to send a smug note to the Turks, but she's worried that they might take it seriously.

“Welcome to sunny Costa del Sol!” a woman in a bikini and a broad-brimmed hat says. “Would you like a smoothie?”

“No, thank you,” Nanaki says, and she trips and falls over her own feet. "Yes, I can speak."

"Very sneaky, she definitely won't remember that," Tifa says dryly, watching the woman run away.

“We can’t stay here,” Cloud says. “Rufus is on that ship, and it’s a small town. We’ll be spotted for sure.”

“But we don’t know where Sephiroth is going next,” Yuffie says.

“Sure we do,” Barret says. “Only one road out of Costa.”

“Sephiroth can apparently fly now,” Cloud reminds him.

“Yeah, but we can’t.”

“Oh, right.”

“I’m sure we’ll find some sign of him. Not a subtle guy, that Sephiroth.”

“So… where are we going, then?” Yuffie asks, trotting to keep up with Barret’s long strides.

“Corel.”


	5. Chapter 5

“Mount Corel, everyone,” Barret says, waving his hand.

It looks… tall. Even to someone from Nibelheim. Less snow, but so, so much walking.

“Are we sure Sephiroth went this way?” Aerith asks, obviously thinking along the same lines.

“Tall fellow, black cape, silver hair?”

Tifa jumps; she hadn’t seen the guy sitting there. What is he doing out here in the middle of nowhere, anyway? Probably best not to engage.

“Yeah, that’s him,” Cloud says, because he has no sense of self-preservation whatsoever.

“Just passed by here,” the guys says.

Aerith sighs. “I had to ask.”

“Got to keep moving,” Barret says, grim-faced.

There is indeed so, so much walking, done mostly in silence in deference to Barret’s mood and the steep incline.

The first change of pace is when they catch sight of the reactor.

“Looks like someone blew it up,” Cloud says.

Barret shrugs. “Shinra certainly thought so. Doubt we’ll ever know what really happened.”

Probably they should try and get through this area as quickly as possible, Tifa thinks. She certainly has no desire to return to the ashes and ruins of _her_ hometown.

Apparently the universe doesn’t agree, because they keep getting ambushed by a horrible monster that likes to explode at unpredictable intervals.

“It’s not materia that’s making it go boom,” Yuffie says glumly. “Some kind of machine? Really bad indigestion?”

“Ew,” Tifa says. “Now I can’t un-think that.”

“They appear to be infused with mako,” Nanaki says, patting out sparks from where one went off right under his nose. “They probably appeared after the reactor was destroyed.”

“Exposed mako can have strange effects on the local wildlife,” Aerith agrees.

They move on, over rickety old wood-and-rope bridges that like to dance in the wind, old mining cart track with great, gaping holes, and rusting, unused train tracks.

Frankly, Tifa doesn’t understand how Barret could have lived here and been afraid of heights. Not that she’s ever really thought about it, but surely mining involves a lot more being underground and a lot less jumping over broken slats while the river is barely visible far, far below you.

As an added bonus, the mountainsides are filled with birds, nasty things with long, sharp beaks and a tendency to toss lightning bolts around.

“Ha! Bet _that’s_ materia!” Yuffie says, flinging her shuriken every which way and trying to get one to fall near them. “Cough it up!”

The tracks are so long they have to stumble along by moonlight. They could have stopped to camp, there are some sections less perilous than others, but they catch sight of the ruins of Corel towards evening, and it’s so depressing that they don’t even discuss stopping. It’s worth a few barked shins and bruised knees.

~*~

After crossing the longest, sketchiest bridge Tifa has ever seen, they abruptly find themselves in the middle of a shanty town. The nicest places are filthy, canvas tents, but there are also people living in rusted out old vehicles, ancient, crumbling stone huts, there’s even someone curled up in an old oil barrel.

This is just awful. Tifa lived under the Plate for years, and she still thinks this is awful. There isn’t even the proliferation of garbage that you could always find in the slums, full of useful or edible odds and ends for the desperate or clever. It’s just dirt.

Not to mention, now that they’re off the mountain, they’re right on the edge of a desert, and it’s uncomfortably warm.

“This is hardly an improvement,” Nanaki grumbles. He must be sweating buckets under all that fur. If sentient cat-things sweat.

Tifa wants to ask where they’re going, since obviously there was nothing to see in Corel, but doesn’t want to bother Barret. His steady pace hasn’t wavered once, and he certainly _seems_ to know where he’s going.

The people are as dusty and worn as their town. At first they just ignore the newcomers.

Then one of them spots Barret.

“You’re him.”

Barret grits his teeth, but, uncharacteristically, remains silent.

They guy scowls and runs off. “Hey, everyone! Wallace is back!”

“I’ll handle this,” Barret says. “Wait here.”

Right, well, Tifa has no intention of doing anything of the sort.

Aerith’s already ducking behind one of the tents for a closer look.

Soon, Barret is surrounded by a group of tough, angry-looking men.

One of them walks right up to him and punches him.

“I can’t believe you’d dare show your face around here again,” another one says.

The third guy spits on Barret’s shoe. “You have a lot of nerve coming back here.”

“Those weirdos with you?” the puncher asks, waving vaguely where the rest of the party is (supposed to be) waiting. “Do they know you bring death to everything you touch?”

“Yeah, it’s your fault we’re stuck in this garbage heap!” This guy hadn’t gotten physical yet, but now he gives Barret a hefty shove.

“Nothing to say for yourself?” the spitter demands. “Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten us already, Wallace.”

Barret hangs his head. “…I’m sorry.”

“You’re sorry? You’re _sorry!?_ Fat lot of good that does any of us! And look at you, with your expensive prosthetic and your fancy Shinra friends, and I see you dug up some pretty girls from somewhere. How much are you paying them, then?”

Barret doesn’t say anything.

“You’re not even worth it,” spitter says in disgust. “Freak. Traitor. _Murderer_.”

“Okay,” Tifa says, taking Barret’s arm. “We’re going now.”

Obviously he’d left out a few pertinent details when telling them about the destruction of Corel.

“It’s the truth,” Barret mutters, knees buckling and almost sending her to the ground. She's strong, but her balance is all off.

Cloud notices her predicament and hurries to help her support Barret’s weight.

The guys throw a number of nasty comments after them, then go back to whatever it was they were doing.

“It’s my fault the whole town was destroyed. It’s because of me everyone died.”

“And if I’d realized what Sephiroth really was, my town would still be here, too,” Cloud says sharply.

“Because of my actions, Shinra chose to drop the Plate,” Tifa says at the same time. “It was still their choice, but some of the fault is mine. We’re none of us perfect, Barret.”

“It’s not the same,” he says.

“Maybe it is, and maybe it isn’t,” Tifa says. “It happened, and there’s nothing to do but keep moving forward. I didn’t see Sephiroth hiding in an oil barrel, how about you, Aerith?”

“Nope.”

Yuffie laughs, then quickly covers her mouth. “Sorry.”

“Shinra never comes down here,” Barret says. “Of all the survivors of the disaster, everyone who could get out, did. Not many made it as far as Midgar, but there’s some work cleaning up around the Saucer, mucking out the chocobo stables, that sort of thing. And of course, there’s the Prison.”

“Well, let’s start with the Saucer,” Aerith suggests.

~*~

“I want to be alone,” Barret says.

“I’m not sure that’s a good idea,” Tifa cautions.

“The Gold Saucer is famous for its entertainment. Go have a good time,” Barret says. “Sephiroth will probably drop in and kill everyone soon enough.”

“Uh, okay,” Tifa says.

“I will remain,” Nanaki says. “This place seems designed for beings with thumbs, and there are too many lights.”

“Wow, bummer,” Yuffie says. “More for us, then! Come on, Cloud, win me a prize!”

“What? No!” he protests futilely as she drags him out.

“We’ll just… go look at… things,” Tifa says.

“Things like the hallway outside our room?” Aerith asks knowingly.

“Well, Nanaki’s with him. We’ll give him an hour to brood, then we’ll make him talk. We used to have a policy in Avalanche, never talk about your past.”

“Doesn’t seem to have worked out very well,” Aerith says.

“Yeah, no kidding.” Tifa looks around. “You know, I think Nanaki kind of had a point. This place is very… bright. And gaudy.”

“I think Don Corneo owns a big chunk of it.”

“Well, that certainly explains a lot.”

They walk some more.

“Look at the size of this place,” Aerith says. “And just on the other side of the gondola, people are starving.”

“I never imagined I would see a place that’s worse than Midgar. They don’t even make anything here. It’s just games. Luxuries. _Waste_.”

“And chocobo races,” Aerith jokes weakly.

“Right. Maybe we should drag Barret to one of those later, see if that cheers him up.”

“Hey hey, ladies, why the long faces?”

Tifa turns and stares. This thing is worth a stare.

It looks like a cat, mostly, but it’s wearing a cape. And a crown.

And _talking._

“Is that supposed to be a moogle?” Aerith asks, equally fascinated. “Oh… it’s a machine! They both are! How clever!”

“Thank you kindly,” the cat says, grinning. “Oh hey, I know just the thing to cheer you up. Want me to read your future? Ooh, how about a _love_ fortune?”

“Uh, that’s really okay.” Tifa says.

“Do I look like a sucker?” Aerith whispers, offended.

“Just for fun!” the cat says. “Come on, what’s the harm? Tell you what, first one’s free!”

“Will you keep following us until we say yes?” Tifa asks.

“Of course not, what do you take me for?”

She sighs. “Fine, let’s just get it over with.”

“Good choice! Oh, but don’t hold it against me if it doesn’t come true!”

Aerith rolls her eyes. “Good grief. I’m losing my edge.”

“I’m Cait Sith!” the cat announces. “Friends call me Cait!”

“So no one,” Tifa mutters.

Cait pretends not to hear.. “Here we go!”

The moogle starts to dance.

“I already regret this,” Tifa says.

“Think we can make a break for it?” Aerith asks.

Cait presents each of them with a slip of paper. “Here you are, ladies! And may I say how lovely—”

“No, you may not,” Tifa says, unrolling her fortune. “ _You learn from your mistakes. You will learn a lot today._  Yeah, like how I should  _not_  be listening to this hunk of metal! What kind of fortune is that?”

Aerith giggles. “Mine says: _Be careful of forgetfulness, your shoes will make you happy today_. Very practical! Though maybe I should give it to Cloud…”

“Well, they say you get what you pay for,” Tifa says. “Guess we walked right into that one.”

“Wait, wait!” Cait shouts, jumping into their path. “Let me try one more time!”

“I could rip you into pieces and toss each one down a different transport tube,” Tifa says pleasantly.

“I think you’ll really want this one!” Cait says, dancing frantically.

“That doesn’t seem very likely,” Aerith says, but takes the fortune anyway. “Huh.”

“What?” Tifa asks. “What’s it say?”

“It says: What you seek is in the Battle Square.”

They look at each other.

“That’s… the most direct fortune I’ve ever heard,” Tifa says.

“Fate’s a mysterious thing,” Cait says virtuously.

“Or, you know more than you’re letting on,” Tifa says, grabbing the cat by the scruff of the neck. “You’re coming with us. Leave the damn moogle.”

“But it’s a critical part of my image!” Cait protests.

“Oh, save it!”

They emerge from the transport tube to see the longest and most unnecessarily frilly staircase Tifa has ever seen. 

“…wow,” Aerith says.

And then the guard collapses.

“Are you kidding me?” Tifa demands, shaking Cait. “How did you know Sephiroth was here!?”

“Not Sephiroth,” Aerith says, trying to look at the body and not look at the body at the same time. “Look. This guy was killed with a gun, not a sword.”

“But Sephiroth left his sword in the President’s body,” Tifa argues. “And there’s no reason he _couldn’t_ use a gun, if he wanted to. I assume.”

“Or it’s a different guy with a gun,” Cait pipes up.

“Quiet, you,” Tifa says, giving him another shake.

They run up the stairs, and the inside certainly _looks_ like Sephiroth’s handiwork, blood and bodies everywhere. But just like the guard outside, they’ve all been shot.

“This one’s still alive!” Cait shouts, waving them over.

“What happened?” Tifa asks. “Was it Sephiroth?”

“What? He’s dead!” The lady coughs. “No, no… it was… some guy with a gun-arm.”

Tifa and Aerith give each other wide-eyed looks.

“Shit.”

More guards come pouring in. "Hey, it's them! They came in with that guy!"

"Double shit."

~*~

Prison. Again.

"I never thought I'd miss Hojo's cells," Aerith says, "but at least they were temperature controlled."

"You should mention that to him," Tifa says, futilely trying to get her shirt to stop sticking to her. Deserts suck.

Aerith waves a hand, which could mean anything really, and the conversation lapses. It's too hot to talk, or think, or plan an escape. They can just lie here until they melt, or Cloud rescues them.

It isn't long before the rest of the party joins them, also under arrest, with the notable exception of Barret. With some effort, Tifa forces her brain back into gear. If they're all in prison, there's no one to break them out but themselves. 

“Do you know what’s going on?” Cloud asks, rubbing his backside after a rough landing. “They didn’t tell us a thing.”

“And they took my chocobo plushie!” Yuffie exclaims, indignant.

“Barret might have killed a bunch of people,” Tifa says. “We’re not sure.”

“Damn it,” Cloud says.

“What’s with the cat?” Yuffie asks.

“We think it might be a Shinra agent.”

Yuffie raises an eyebrow.

“Just… don’t ask.”

“I see Barret,” Nanaki says.

He has his head in his hands. “All my fault. All my fault.”

“This had better be misplaced guilt and not colossal stupidity,” Tifa says. “Come on, we need to talk.”

“No, there’s something I need to do. Alone.”

“Um, no? Last time we left you alone we all got thrown in prison. Let’s find a shady spot and maybe you can tell us what’s going on.”

“I… but… all right.”

The closest building is occupied by some tough-looking guys, but Aerith scares them off.

“Well, looks like we have some time on our hands,” Cloud says. “So what’s the deal? You kill those guys or what?”

“No, I… that was someone else. I… I don’t know where to begin.”

“How about at the beginning?” Aerith says. “Tell us about Corel.”

“Corel… It was always small, dusty and poor and not very impressive. But it was home, you know? A real small town, everyone helped each other out. It used to be something to be proud of; a real Corellian could make soup out of coal dust and dreams, we used to say. But we kept tightening our belts, buckling down and working harder, and still the coal got scarcer and scarcer, and out bellies emptier and emptier. People were starving. Especially the kids. It couldn’t continue.”

“And then Shinra?” Yuffie asks. “They tried that with us, too.”

“Yeah, and then Shinra. It was the first time I heard of a ‘mako reactor’. We might be almost out of coal, but we had another resource, and Shinra was extremely interested. They pulled out all the stops; fancy executives, video presentations—most of us had never even seen a video before—multi-course dinners with the “town leadership”. And I fell for it like a damn fool. I became their champion, convinced the entire town that mako was a new future for us.”

“Shinra knows just what to say,” Cloud says. “They got me and Zack both with promises of glory and heroism.”

“And it couldn’t have been you alone,” Aerith says gently. “If kids were starving and the coal was running out, there must have been other support for the plan.”

“Some. Maybe. But I was the real driving force. You know me.”

Tifa fights back a highly inappropriate snort of agreement.

“But whether for their own reasons, my influence, or the damn Shinra, it didn’t take long for the council to agree. All except Dyne.”

“Dyne?” Tifa prompts.

“We were best friends, our wives, too. We’d all grown up together. Marlene is his kid. We’d always had each other’s back, before.” He takes a deep breath. “But Dyne refused to agree to the reactor. He was sure that we would find more coal, that demand would increase even with this new mako power, that we just had to keep on as we had been and things would get better. I said some nasty things, unforgivable things, about him being trapped in the past, his head stuck in the sand. Of not caring about Marlene’s future.”

“You both had good points,” Yuffie says unexpectedly. She glares when they all give her surprised looks, even Nanaki. “Look, Wutai is a traditional place. Very traditional. I understand about doing things the same way as all your ancestors, just because that’s the way they’ve always been done. And that’s important. But because we refused to change our ways, Shinra rolled right over us, and now there’s almost nothing left.”

“Right, what she said,” Cloud says. “Well said, Yuffie.”

“You don’t have to sound so surprised,” she mutters.

“Well, turns out he was right, and I was wrong. So, so wrong. We weren’t even there when it happened, off looking at a potential new reactor site instead of taking care of our families. There was an explosion at the reactor, and Shinra thought it was sabotage. When no one confessed, they burned the whole town to the ground.”

“Oh no,” Aerith says.

“We ran to help, of course, but we were too late. Less than a quarter of us survived. Myrna, my wife… she died in our bed. The smoke. I can only hope that she didn’t wake up, didn’t suffer. Dyne’s wife, she got trapped. She pushed Marlene out the window before she burned.”

Tifa and Cloud bump into each other when they both lean in to clasp his shoulder at the same time.

“I didn’t learn all that until later. I was so angry, and heartbroken, and… and afraid. But not Dyne. He dragged me to my feet, got me moving again. Said we had to help everyone. We never made it to the village, got ambushed by the same Shinra toady who sold us on the idea of the reactor. Dyne stumbled, and I tried to save him, but…” Barret rests his hand on his gun-arm. “She blew both our arms off, and he fell.”

“Who was it?” Yuffie asks. “Do you remember who shot you?”

“Blond woman,” Barret says. “Crack shot, even in high heels.”

“Scarlet,” Cloud says confidently. “Head of Weapons Research and Development.”

“We’ll make sure to get her when we bring Sephiroth and Shinra down,” Yuffie says.

“I thought that was the end of it,” Barret says. “I took Marlene in, I already thought of her as my own and I was sure Dyne was dead. When I got this gun-arm to fight back against Shinra, the doc told me that he’d just done the same procedure but for a left arm, and I didn’t even think... Dyne and I always were too damn alike for our own good. And this all feels very… personal. I blame myself, and I should, but everyone supported the reactor, everyone but Dyne. And yet everyone hates me and me alone. I just have the feeling that this is Dyne, and all my mistakes have come back to haunt me.”

“None of that,” Aerith says, smacking his arm. “If you need to confront him, or apologize to him, get closure, that’s fine. But we’re coming with you. This isn’t just about you and your revenge, or your guilt. This is about the whole world.”

“That’s right,” Yuffie says. “It was really dumb to trust Shinra, but you can’t take it back, so you have to make up for it instead. Like me. I’m going to restore Wutai to its former glory if I have to do it with just my two hands!”

Cloud shrugs. “Those were the two points I was going to make, but they said it way better. Do what you have to do, don’t get killed, and then we keep moving forward.”

Barret breathes in deeply, then lets it out slowly. “You’re right.”

“I’ll look into getting us out of here,” Tifa says. “Aerith, you in? This seems like it would be just right for your skill set. No offense.”

“Hey, breaking out of prison is a _very_ useful skill. I’m not ashamed.”

“Cloud, will you come with me?” Barret asks. “This is a man’s job.”

“Oh, good grief,” Yuffie says, rolling her eyes. “Like I wanted to get drawn into even more drama. Let’s go bust some heads.”

“I will join you,” Nanaki says. “Last time I was invited on a ‘man’s outing’ I had to swim in the ocean.”

“I could—” Cait says.

“Nope, you’re coming with us,” Tifa says. “I don’t trust you.”

“Right, let’s mosey,” Cloud says.

Aerith flicks his forehead.

“Sorry, I mean, let’s jet.”

“Ugh,” Yuffie says. “I’m so embarrassed to be seen with you lot.” 

~*~

Tifa and Aerith are still arguing with the guards when Barret and Cloud return.

“It’s done,” Barret says. “Dyne can rest in peace.”

The warden’s eyes almost pop out. “Dyne? He’s dead?”

“That’s right,” Aerith says, grabbing his collar and yanking him off balance. “Now does that count as getting his permission, or do you need to see his head?”

“Um, no, that’s fine,” he sputters, choking.

“Nicely done,” Tifa says.

“Thanks.”

“So… they’re just going to let us out now?” Cloud asks.

Tifa sighs. “Apparently if we win a chocobo race and donate the winnings to the warden, they’ll let us go. I’d be disgusted by the blatant corruption, but it’s going to save our skins. So I’ll wait until we’re out.”

“Chocobo racing,” Barret says, looking alive for the first time in days. “My time has come.”

“You’re not really the, uh, usual, er, build, for a jockey,” the warden says.

“Shut up,” Cloud says. “What do you care anyway?”

~*~

“Wow,” Tifa says.

“I think maybe the chocobo just wanted to get it over with,” Aerith says.

“Well it worked, that’s all that matters.”

They both watch the poor chocobo wheezing while Barret collects his laurels. 

~*~

“I have something to say,” Barret says.

“We don’t really—”

“Shut up, Cloud,” Tifa says. “I will kick you.”

“Before he died, Dyne told me that for him, the world is nothing but despair and emptiness. That he was filled with so much anger, all he wanted was to destroy everything, his people, himself, even Marlene. His hatred and revenge totally consumed him.”

He shakes his head.

“I don’t want that to be me. I want to build, not destroy. I don’t want to be unworthy to hold Marlene in my arms. And that’s why I’m going to stay here.”

“You’re what?”

“You’ve got a big group together. You don’t need one more guy with a gun. But here, my people need me. Marlene needs me. After you take down Sephiroth, Shinra’s not going to just roll over and die, too. If Corel can recover from Shinra’s betrayal, show people that mako’s not the only way, really prosper, that will help everyone. Otherwise, what are we saving the world for?”

“You’re not just a guy with a gun to us,” Tifa says. “But I understand. And for what it’s worth, I think you’re making the right choice. Marlene really wants you to be around more.”

“It won’t be easy,” Aerith says. “They won’t accept you right away.”

“I can take it,” Barret says. “It’s time to let go of the guilt and move on. I’ll help them a lot more by rebuilding this town with my own hand than by curling up in a corner and wallowing.”

“Yeah, fine,” Cloud says. “I can’t disagree with anything you’re saying, but I'll miss having you around just the same. You’ve been a true friend, Barret. Good luck.”

“Yeah, well, don’t lose my PHS number, hear? And give Sephiroth a few whacks for me.”

“We will.”


	6. Chapter 6

“We’re almost to Cosmo Canyon,” Nanaki says, sighing. “It’s been years since I was last home.”

“You might have to wait just a little longer,” Aerith says. “We’re getting a little light on food.”

“We wouldn’t be running low if we’d just gone straight over the mountains,” Nanaki points out.

“No more mountains,” Tifa says. “I’ve had more than enough of mountains. Is there a town near here?”

“Gongaga,” Cait says.

They all look at him. They’re no closer to finding out what exactly he is, but he knows the strangest things. Like, apparently, geography.

“Cloud? Is that true?” Aerith asks.

“How the hell should I know? I thought it was in the Nibel mountains, remember?”

“Well, if you see any frogs, run,” Tifa says.

“I’m sure that’s not a real thing,” Cloud says. 

~*~

“You bring these things on yourself,” Tifa says.

Yuffie’s laughing like a hyena in the background.

“Ribbit,” Cloud says.

~*~

“You must be new around here,” the shopkeeper says. “Always keep both eyes out for the Touch Me’s.”

“Don’t worry, we’ll make sure Cloud looks back on this moment with shame for the rest of his life,” Yuffie says, grinning.

“I can sell you a quick fix-up for 150 gil.”

Cloud flicks his tongue out.

“We’ll take it,” Aerith says.

“Let’s never speak of this,” Cloud says, when he’s human-shaped again.

“Dream on, Spiky,” Yuffie says gleefully. 

~*~

“It’s so quiet here,” Nanaki says. “It’s terrible that so many people were hurt when the reactor exploded, but the Planet is more at peace here than any other city we’ve been. It almost reminds me of home.”

“Peaceful my ass,” Cloud says. “I got turned into a damn frog.”

“Quit your whining, I think I hear something!” Yuffie whispers, at about the same volume as a normal person’s shout.

“Oh crap, it’s those Turks again,” Cloud says. “Looks like you didn’t get that redhead as good as you thought, Tifa.”

She cracks her knuckles. “How fortunate that I have another chance, now.”

“Would you two hush up?” Yuffie demands. “They’re Turks, so they might tell us something useful.”

“Not these ones,” Tifa mutters, but quietly.

“So those Avalanche girls. Which one’s hottest, do you think?” the redhead asks.

“Oh, you have got to be kidding me,” Aerith says.

“Tifa,” Rude says.

“Hey!” Tifa says, at the same time as Reno.

“She almost killed me!” Reno says.

Rude raises an eyebrow.

“Well, maybe it would have been badass if it happened to someone _else_ , but as is I think I’m justified in holding a grudge, man! I couldn’t eat solid food for a month!”

Aerith discreetly high-fives her, followed by a not-so-discreet fist-bump from Yuffie.

“Besides, I thought you and Elena were a thing.”

“Me and Elena? You know she’s hung up on the boss.”

“Is this seriously what men talk about when they’re alone?” Tifa asks.

Cloud and, surprisingly, Cait both shrug.

“Pretty much,” Cloud says. “They’re Turks, though, so I expected—well, I don’t know what I expected.”

“And yet somehow, they still manage to disappoint,” Elena says, appearing in their midst.

Cloud jumps back. “Hey! Where’d you come from?”

“What, only you guys are allowed to eavesdrop? It’s kind of a Turk specialty, you know.” She saunters right through their group. “Hey, losers! Look alive, we’ve got company!”

“Well, she’s changed,” Cloud says.

“It’s you guys,” Reno says, grinding his teeth. “It’s payback time.”

“Bring it on, ginger,” Tifa says. “I’m sure you’ve missed drinking your meals through a straw.”

“I’m going to break every bone in your body.”

Tifa smiles. “You can try.” 

~*~

“Well, that was annoying,” Tifa says. “I can’t believe they ran away.”

“ _I_ can’t believe Reno came back for another round after what you did to him last time,” Cloud says.

“I so need details,” Yuffie says.

“Well…” Tifa hedges. “They’re sort of Aerith’s friends.”

“Little late for _that_ song, sister,” Yuffie says.

“Oh, Reno’s an annoying little twit, no arguments here,” Aerith says. “It’s just Tseng who potentially has hidden depths.”

“Very, very hidden,” Cloud qualifies.

“Gongaga’s pretty small, but there are a few shops,” Tifa says. “Besides the pharmacy we saw already.”

Cloud glowers. “Ha ha.”

“So I think we can get everything we need here. Not much else to do, so it should be quick.”

“There’s one other thing,” Aerith says.

“Oh?”

“I want to go see Zack’s parents. They should know how he died.”

Tifa and Cloud each take one of her hands.

“Okay,” Cloud says. “That’s a good idea. We’ll go with you.”

“I guess that leaves us with the shopping,” Yuffie huffs. She glares at Nanaki. “We should make you saddlebags or something.”

“Absolutely not.”

“I’m top-notch at finding the best bargains!” Cait says. “Just follow me!”

“Oh geez,” Tifa says. “Remind me to check what they bought before we leave.”

“Agreed,” Cloud says.

The moment of levity fades, and they start exploring the town. They don’t know which house they want, but it’s a small town. They only have to ask three people before they find the right door.

“I’m here for both of you,” Tifa says, slinging an arm over each of their shoulders and pulling them both in for a hug. “Whatever I can do.”

“Right,” Aerith says, swiping at eyes that are already tearing up. “Here goes.”

A pretty woman with many laugh lines opens the door. “Yes?”

“Hi, I’m Aerith. You don’t know me, but I used to date your son. Can I come in?”

“O-of course. Let me just get my husband.”

“We haven’t heard from him in years,” Mrs. Fair says, settling on the couch with her husband’s hand firmly clasped in hers. “Or seen him in even longer. He promised to visit, but of course he never did. Always someone else needed his help.” She sniffles.

“…oh,” Aerith says, and looks at Tifa imploringly.

“I’m afraid we have some bad news,” Tifa says.

Mrs. Fair starts to cry in earnest.

“Your son—Zack—he, I’m afraid he died.”

“We knew,” Mr. Fair says, tears streaming down his own face. “They wouldn’t tell us anything, but we knew. He may have been too busy saving the world to hike all the way out here, but he messaged us regularly, and called at least once a week. Until he didn’t, and all mention of him disappeared from the news, and the SOLDIER program dissolved seemingly overnight.”

“Can you tell us what happened?” Mrs. Fair asks. “Anything you know.”

“As it turns out,” Tifa says, “we knew him. All of us. We’ll tell you everything.”

“Me first,” Aerith says. She takes a deep breath. “I first met Zack when he fell through my roof and crushed all my flowers.”

Both of Zack’s parents laugh, watery but real.

“That sounds like him,” Mrs. Fair says.

“He kept trying to think up new ways to impress me so he could win dates. It became a kind of game between us. He… he brought so much light into my life. He helped me start a business so I could help my mom, and he bought me this ribbon because it reminded him of me.” She twists it around her fingers. “Do you—would you like to have it?”

“You keep it,” Mrs. Fair says, pressing it into her hands. “It was meant for you. And it makes me happy to know that he’s remembered.”

“Always,” Aerith says. “We were together for almost two years before his last mission, and we both had hard times, but we always supported each other. That’s what I remember best. He was always quick with a smile or a hug if I was sad, but more than that, he let me do the same for him. None of the macho crap—excuse me, stuff.”

“He’s a good boy,” Mr. Fair says.

“The best. I sent him letters, all the time he was gone, but… I don’t think he ever got them.”

Tifa clears her throat. “That last mission… it was to my hometown, Nibelheim. He came with a team to investigate some weird monster activity around the reactor, and I was their guide. Nibelheim’s kind of a backwater.”

“Unlike Gongaga,” Mr. Fair says, with Zack’s smile.

She has to clear her throat again. “Uh, no one knows what happened, exactly. General Sephiroth was on the mission, too and he… went crazy, or something. Started ranting about being a god, then burned down the town.”

“Oh my!” Mrs. Fair says.

“And, well, you know Zack. They fought, and Sephiroth died—or at least fell into the mako pool under the reactor—but Zack was hurt. Badly.”

“He didn’t die there, though,” Cloud interjects. Everyone turns to look at him, and he blushes. “Sorry, just… I was there, too. And I want you to know how brave your son was. We were both hurt, and a piece of shit Shinra scientist called Hojo decided to have us declared dead and experiment on us.”

“Um,” Tifa says.

“Oh, you’ll find no love for Shinra here,” Mr. Fair says. “Didn’t lift a damn finger when the reactor blew. It’s all their fault, too cheap for regular maintenance. People died.” He shakes his head. “So, Hojo. The same Hojo who managed the SOLDIER program?”

“Yeah,” Cloud says. “He had us for almost five years, and I was so sick, completely delirious. But Zack never gave up. And one day, he saw his chance, and he broke us both out. He carried me across half the Planet, fed me and cleaned me up and did every damn thing himself. I could barely hold my own head up, didn’t recognize him half the time. But he never even thought about leaving me. Kept going on about his promise to Aerith, that he had to get back to her.”

They’re all crying now.

Cloud’s shoulders sag. “We almost made it, too. We could see that damn city. But Shinra caught up with us, and Zack… he hid me, and went off to fight a whole fucking army all by himself. And he _did_. They killed him, but he wiped them out, and they didn’t catch me. He saved me. He was a hero.”

“To all of us,” Tifa says.

They hug some more and cry some more, and Tifa doesn’t know if anyone was actually helped by this but she’s cautiously optimistic. She didn’t know him nearly well as the other two, but from what she knew and heard, Zack was a great guy. He deserves to be remembered.

~*~

“I can see it!” Nanaki calls out, running past them and up to the cliffside settlement. “Home!”

“Sometimes I wonder how old he is,” Aerith says. “Relatively speaking.”

“Wooo, new materia!” Yuffie shrieks, pelting after him.

“And then I don’t wonder anymore.”

“You said it,” Cait says.

Tifa pokes him. “You don’t have any room to talk. Why am I carrying you again?”

“You broke my moogle.”

Well, it does have a certain logic to it. “Fine.”

They trudge up the steps at a much more sedate pace, feeling decades older than the two (maybe) teenagers.

“Welcome to Cosmo Canyon, where researchers from around the world come to study the Planet,” the guy at the top of the stairs says. “Unfortunately, all our positions are filled right now, but if you’d like to apply for a fellowship, I can get you the paperwork.”

“You have got to be kidding me,” Tifa says.

“On the other hand, we’ve lost Yuffie,” Cloud says. “Not a total loss.”

“I heard that!” Yuffie yells.

“They helped me escape,” Nanaki says, bounding up out of nowhere. “They’re my friends. I want to introduce them to grandfather.”

“Oh, well that’s completely different, then,” the guy says. “Go on through.”

“My people faced a great war here when I was small,” Nanaki says, herding them up the steps much faster than Tifa had intended to take them. “My mother died protecting me, but my father was a coward and abandoned our tribe in our time of need.”

“Oh,” Cloud says, after an awkward silence. “Uh, sorry?”

“It’s my legacy to overshadow his,” Nanaki says. “Shinra only caught me because I distracted them so everyone else could escape. And now that I’m home again, I’ll protect everyone, and I won’t fail like _him_.”

Tifa senses there are issues to be resolved here.

“My grandfather Bugenhagen is the leading expert on Planetology on the Planet,” Nanaki brags. “No one’s smarter than he is.”

“Is that Nanaki I hear?”

“Haha, grandfather!”

“Welcome back.”

Bugenhagen deserves a long look. He’s wearing brightly-colored robes with intricate patterns, and perched on the strangest mobility assistance device she’s ever seen. It almost looks like it’s hovering!

He’s also a lot more human than she was anticipating.

“Thank you for looking after my Nanaki,” Bugenhagen says. “He’s only a little boy, after all.”

“Grandfather, please.”

“Called it,” Aerith whispers.

“Have you come to hear my theory of Planet Life?” Bugenhagen asks, a glint in his eye.

“I’ve missed you dearly, grandfather, but not your lectures,” Nanaki says. “Besides, I have a lot of protecting the tribe to catch up on. I won’t be a disappointment.”

“Ah, about that. There comes a time in every young man’s life when he needs to take a journey to discover himself.”

“But I’ve just been on a journey!”

“This isn’t far; down into the Cave of the Gi. If you’re going to defend us, you should know the truth of our enemies.”

“I’ll go right now!”

“But perhaps not alone?”

Cloud scratches his head. “I’m, uh, not all that interested in Planet Life, sorry. Can one of you just give me the highlights?”

“Well I’m definitely staying,” Aerith says.

“Me, too,” Cait says, and not obnoxiously for a change.

“If you’re talking about what I think you’re talking about, we learn this in primary school in Wutai,” Yuffie says. “And if you aren’t, who cares? I didn’t run away from home just so I could go to school on _purpose_.”

“Guess I’ll stay, then,” Tifa says. “Maybe we’ll learn something that will help us against Sephiroth.”

“Take care of yourself, and your companions,” Bugenhagen says. “And Nanaki?”

“Yes?”

“Keep an open mind. Be ready to receive the lesson, whatever it is.”

“You’ve told me that a thousand times, grandfather,” Nanaki grumps, and slinks off with Cloud and Yuffie in tow.

“I have missed him,” Bugenhagen says with a fond, foolish smile.

“He was very eager to get back,” Tifa says.

“Well, a little travel was good for him, I’m sure. Now, come see my observatory! It’s one of a kind, and I’m quite proud of it, if I do say so myself.”

Tifa hasn’t been to school since she left Nibelheim, but the tendency to drone on is exactly how she remembers it. In between long tangents on the origin of the Planet and the effects of the various celestial bodies, there are some extremely alarming points.

If mako is composed of the spiritual energy of all life on the Planet, and if reactors consume and destroy that mako…

Well. Maybe Sephiroth shouldn’t be their first priority after all. It won’t do much good saving humanity from him if there isn’t a Planet left for them to live on.

They’re all quiet and thoughtful when the lecture finally ends.

“I need to meditate,” Aerith says, and disappears.

“I’m thinking a strong drink and panicking is called for,” Cait says.

“You’re a robot,” Tifa reminds him. “But do what you want, just, try to stay out of trouble? I’m going to call Barret. Whatever his plans are for Corel, he needs to step up his timeline.” 

~*~

“How are you doing?” Tifa asks, settling beside Aerith.

She shrugs.

It’s chilly up here, but somehow Tifa doubts it’s the cold that’s making her hunch in on herself like that. Her arms are so tight around her knees she’s probably lost feeling in them.

“Here, lean on me,” Tifa says, putting an arm around her shoulder and pulling her close. “What’s bothering you?”

“What did you think about what Bugenhagen said?”

“Planet Life theory?” Tifa shrugs. “I guess if all life is going to suddenly die out and the Planet break apart, of course it’s going to happen during my lifetime.”

Aerith’s shoulders shake with suppressed laughter. “You’re always so practical.”

“Well, I try to be. Things have gotten really big all of a sudden, you know? I used to be the Mayor’s daughter, kind of a spoiled brat, to be honest. And then Sephiroth attacked, and he was scary, but he was still just one guy, you know? Then came Avalanche, up against all of Shinra, and now we’re supposed to protect the whole Planet? I’m just the girl who punches stuff.”

“Yes,” Aerith says, “yes, that’s it exactly. I’m sure Bugenhagen is telling the truth—did you know he’s taught himself to hear the Planet almost as well as a Cetra? I knew it’s been screaming, hurting, but I didn’t know why. And now I do, and I don’t know what to do!”

“It’s not just on you, you know.”

“But it is! I’m the last Cetra; there’s no one else!”

Tifa gives her a little shake. “Well, Last Cetra, this girl and her boring, human fists of fury will be right beside you the whole way.”

Aerith rests her head against Tifa’s shoulder. “You think I’m being silly.”

“Not really. I don’t know anything about the Cetra, and I don’t really understand this Planet Life theory either, to be honest. But I do know you. You care about everyone. You’ll figure something out. And your friends will help you.”

“I just wish my mom was here. She’d know exactly what to do.”

“Maybe. And maybe not. Parents don’t know everything.” She frowns. “Can I—can I tell you a secret?”

“Of course.”

“I don’t know if this will help, but—” Tifa coughs self-consciously. “Sorry, I’ve-I’ve never told anyone this before. You know my town was destroyed, right?”

“By Sephiroth.”

“Yeah, I’ve probably mentioned it twenty times by now, sorry. Sephiroth is Shinra, and mako reactors are Shinra, so during the bad times when I felt like all I could do was hate, I hated Shinra. I hated them so much. It was all their fault. They’re evil. So what if people get hurt when Avalanche attacks, they’re Shinra, they made their choices.”

“You were hurting.”

“Yeah, but that’s no excuse. I wasn’t a little kid, I knew things weren’t that simple. And-and I knew I was lying to myself. My dad was Mayor, and Nibelheim’s reactor didn’t build itself. He knew Shinra, worked with Shinra. He _was_ Shinra. And half the town worked in the reactor. We were all Shinra. So how can I kill with Avalanche, and still mourn my people? How can I hate Sephiroth, but still love my dad?”

“Your dad didn’t kill everyone.”

“I don’t know,” Tifa whispers, even though there’s no one but Aerith to hear. “How did he know to go up to the reactor? He knew something was wrong before anyone else did. I… I can’t help but wondering, how much did he know? Was he trying to hide Shinra secrets? Could he have warned everyone to evacuate the town? If I really knew everything that happened that day, would I hate him, too?”

Aerith hugs her close. “Everyone made their choices that day, even Sephiroth. I know you, so I feel like I know your dad, too. I’m sure he did what he thought was best, for you and for Nibelheim.”

“Well his best wasn’t good enough.”

“You survived, though. And so did Cloud. Not everything was lost.”

Tifa sniffles. “I guess.”

“Well, _I’m_ glad. Otherwise I would never have met you.”

“Point. We’ve all found each other.” Tifa shakes her head, trying to remember where she was going with this. “That did not turn out nearly as comforting as I’d hoped. I had a point somewhere in there about parents being fallible, but I think I’ve rather lost the thread. I have some stories about my mom getting sick and slowly dying for months, if that’s more helpful.”

“Let’s not talk about our dead parents anymore. That’s not helping the world look any less big and scary.”

“Well. Do you know anything about the stars?”

“Not a thing. Slumrat, remember?”

“Well, maybe the Planet whispered about them to you, what do I know?”

“Not much, clearly, since the stars aren’t part of the Planet.”

“…right. Well, there are supposed to pictures in the stars, right?”

“I think I heard that somewhere. Why?”

“There, don’t you think those ones look like a chocobo?”

“I don’t see it.”

“Here, turn your head like this.”

“Oh! I see it!”

“Heh, we’re experts already. Now you find one.” 

~*~

Gathered around the fire the next evening, Tifa feels a strong sense of camaraderie with her fellow travelers. Even stupid Cait Sith.

“Did you have a good trip?” she asks, feeling warm and well-fed and content.

“It was… enlightening,” Nanaki says. “My father didn’t abandon us, after all. He was a hero.”

Tifa can’t help wishing, selfishly, that her dad was really a hero, too.

Aerith squeezes her arm like she knows exactly what she’s thinking.

“I’m going to honor both of my parents,” Nanaki says. “The tribe will be strong again, and Cosmo Canyon will prosper. I’ll make sure grandfather’s teachings spread to every corner of the Planet.”

“Good idea,” Cloud says. “Especially that last one. Won’t do your tribe much good if there isn’t any Planet left for them to live on.”

Tifa nods; she’d said pretty much the same thing to Aerith earlier.

“Hmm,” Yuffie says, looking serious and thoughtful.

Tifa wonders if she should be worried.


	7. Chapter 7

“Well,” Tifa says, after they've said their goodbyes to Nanaki and set off again, “Sephiroth wasn’t in the Gold Saucer, he wasn’t in Gongaga, and he wasn’t in Cosmo Canyon. Is there even anything else on this continent?”

“Rocket Town,” Cait suggests. “That’s a Shinra outpost.”

“Maybe he’s on his way to invade Wutai again,” Yuffie says darkly.

“Or,” Cloud says, “maybe he’s gone back to the scene of the crime, as it were.”

“Nibelheim?” Tifa asks.

“Nibelheim.”

She takes a deep breath. “I don’t want to go back there. No one wants to go there, full stop. Why would he? There can’t be anything left.”

“There will still be pieces of the reactor,” Aerith says, squeezing her hand. “We saw that in Corel and Gongaga. That’s where he was supposed to have died, right? Maybe there’s something there he wants.”

“… damn it, that actually makes sense.” 

~*~

“Well,” Yuffie says, “this is not what I expected.”

“What the hell?” Tifa looks at Cloud. “Seriously, what the hell!?”

He shrugs. “Don’t look at me, I’ve got the Swiss cheese brain. Maybe it wasn’t actually destroyed and you just forgot to tell me.”

“Am _I_ the one with brain damage?”

“Interesting fashion choices out here,” Cait says.

“What, all the black cloaks? That’s not a Nibelheim thing.”

“Black cloaks?” Aerith echoes.

“…uh oh.”

They climb down the mountain and into the town, which looks exactly as Tifa remembers it. There’s her house, and there’s the broken support beam on the porch where she liked to practice her kicks. She half-expects her dad to step out the door at any moment.

She approaches the first black-cloaked figure, and almost has a heart attack when she finds herself facing Sephiroth. She punches him purely on reflex, and he flies back and takes out another post.

“Hrngh,” he says, and flails around a bit like a turtle on its back.

“Nice shot,” Yuffie says.

“Not really. I barely touched him.”

“This one is also Sephiroth,” Cait says.

“And this one,” Aerith says.

“What do your Cetra senses tell you?” Cloud asks, trying to keep all the Sephiroths in his line of sight.

They just shuffle around and moan a lot.

“That they’re… weird,” Aerith says.

“Oh, that’s helpful,” Yuffie says, rolling her eyes.

“Almost like they aren’t really there.”

“More ghosts?” Tifa asks, prodding at the one she knocked over with her foot. “Are they going to fly away, too?”

“Do you ever get the feeling that we’re making backwards progress figuring all this out?” Yuffie asks. “I’m a little embarrassed for Wutai that we got taken out by _this_.”

“This is… well, whatever this is,” Tifa says. “It's nothing at all like what Sephiroth is actually like, which you’ll hopefully never experience personally. Trust me on this one.”

“Maybe we should ask around?” Cloud asks.

They don’t have any better ideas, so that’s what they do.

It just keeps getting weirder, though, because Tifa grew up here, she should know every one of these people—yet all of them are strangers. And all of them swear they’ve lived here their whole lives.

“No, you haven’t!” she yells, finally losing her temper. “You know why? This is my house! That’s my room! You can’t have lived here because _I_ was living here!”

“You must be mistaken,” the woman says with a wide, false smile.

Tifa throws up her hands and stalks out.

“No one seems to know anything,” Aerith says, joining her.

“They’re lying,” Cait says confidently. “About what, I don’t know. But they know they aren’t telling the truth.”

“I went to my house,” Cloud says, trudging up to them. “It was empty.”

“Sorry,” Tifa says, patting his arm.

“Everyone here is bug-nuts,” Yuffie announces, and Tifa can’t really disagree. “Probably us, too.”

“So… any other ideas, Cloud?”

He frowns. “Well, we’ve come this far. After Hojo captured Zack and me, we were held in the old Shinra Mansion. Might as well poke around there, give the nightmares a good stir.”

“The haunted mansion?” Tifa asks, huddling in on herself.

“Seriously? You’ve fought your way across half the Planet with your bare hands and a little kids’ ghost story is where you draw the line?”

“That place is creepy.”

“Yeah, because it’s Hojo’s. I’d rather have the ghosts, frankly.”

“So… Mansion?” Aerith asks.

There’s a sort of collective shrug.

“Okay, then.”

~*~

Tifa pushes the door to the Mansion, which creaks open ominously. “Oh, come on.”

“It just looks like a house,” Aerith says. "Well, like a mansion, anyway. Really dirty, and unnecessarily large, but not especially creepy." 

“The lab’s in the basement,” Cloud says. “Don’t worry, there’s plenty of Hojo’s personal touch.”

“This looks authentic,” Cait says, clawing at some moldy curtains. “The rest of the town, it was like some kind of stage show. But this looks and smells, well, old and neglected. Like it should. Did the Mansion burn with the rest of the town?”

“I… I don’t remember,” Tifa says. “I was unconscious when Master Zangan took me out of the reactor. I only know about the fire because he told me.”

“Don’t look at me,” Cloud says, shrugging. “I spent the whole time in a mako tube.”

“So those could really be Hojo’s original labs down there,” Aerith says.

“Ghost!” Yuffie shrieks.

Tifa, to her great shame, screams and jumps behind Aerith.

“It’s just a dorky face,” Cloud says, rolling his eyes. “There’s loads of them around here. A bit poisonous, but mostly just a pain in the ass.”

Yuffie shrugs. “Huh, never seen them before.”

“Please kill me,” Tifa says.

“Don’t worry, I’ll protect you,” Aerith says, smirking.

They wander through the house, but there doesn’t seem to be any convenient door labeled ‘Secret Lab this way’.

“I’m starting to understand why you believe this house is haunted,” Cait says, dodging out of the way as one of the chandeliers comes to life and attacks them.

“No one ever goes in here. Not since Shinra left. The rumors started because at night, you can sometimes hear someone screaming.” Cloud pauses contemplatively. “I guess for a while that might have been me.”

“Well that’s not at all worrying,” Aerith says, after a lengthy pause.

They complete their investigation of the house on the upper floors, none the wiser for how to get down to the labs.

“Are you sure it was here, Cloud?” Tifa asks.

“I’m sure. I don’t remember being brought here, but I certainly remember getting out. Well, Zack does, anyway. And this old Mansion is pretty memorable, I don’t think I could have mistaken it for someplace else.”

“Well, what about this chimney?” Cait asks. “Does anyone remember seeing a fireplace downstairs?”

“I’ll check,” Yuffie says, backflipping off the stair rail.

“She’s going to break her neck,” Tifa says, watching the dust cloud as Yuffie darts out of sight.

It’s barely a minute before she sprints back, running on top of the banister just to show off, probably.

“No fireplace,” she confirms.

They contemplate the very solid-looking stone for a bit.

Cloud taps it with the handle of his sword. “Well, that was my idea.”

“What about that very obvious safe behind you?” Yuffie asks.

“Ooh, safe!” Cait says, bouncing over. “I’ve always wanted to be a safecracker!”

“Um, okay,” Tifa says.

Cait presses his ear against the door. “Hush, I’m trying to listen.”

They obediently hush, and after only a few false tries, the safe pops open.

“Ha! I’m a master criminal, yes indeed!”

Something oozes out of the safe, glimmering bright red and purple.

“Well, that can’t be good,” Aerith says.

“That is the strangest booby-trap I’ve ever seen,” Cait says. “Some kind of acid?”

As soon as it finishes dripping onto the floor, it begins growing. Fast.

“Oh, look, a monster,” Tifa says, checking that her gloves are securely strapped. “Help. Save us.”

“Hey, I seem to remember _someone_ running away from a dorky face,” Cloud snarks, brandishing his sword.

“You’re a dorky face,” Tifa mutters, and then the fight is on.

This can’t be a natural monster, both from the method of entry and it’s bizarre properties. It’s highly susceptible to Aerith’s magic… but only on one side.

“Should have asked Nanaki for the fire materia back,” Cloud says, hacking uselessly at the bright purple… flesh.

Tifa, meanwhile, has succeeded in ripping off one of its… limbs? Hair follicles? Who knows?

“Maybe try over here,” she suggests. “Where it’s orange-ish.”

“I think it’s really more red than orange,” Yuffie says, severing some more appendages with her shuriken. “Ha! Take that, slime monster!”

“It all looks the same to me,” Cait says from his vantage point on Tifa’s shoulder.

“Why aren’t you fighting?” Tifa asks, batting his tail out of her eyes.

“No!” Yuffie says. “No fighting for him.”

Tifa raises an eyebrow.

“Trust me, he uses some kind of loud noise to fight, so loud it can actually knock enemies down. I thought I might have gone permanently deaf,” she glares at Cait, who digs his claws into Tifa’s shoulder, cowering.

“Okay, let’s skip that, then,” Tifa says. “Looks like we’ve got this, anyway.”

Right on cue, the purplish bit starts… leaking, or something, and soon the entire thing is a uniform color.

“Crap,” Cloud says. “Why couldn’t it change the other way?”

“Because it’s us?” Tifa asks, punching it experimentally. The flesh doesn’t give, but her hand almost does. “Ow.”

“Here, Cloud,” Aerith says, tossing him a materia.

“I’ll help!” Yuffie says.

“Don’t you dare start an earthquake inside the house!” Tifa shouts, grabbing Yuffie’s arm before she does something stupid.

“Aww…”

They have to dodge a bit, but the slime monster isn’t very fast, and it’s hard to concentrate when you’re continuously being electrocuted and encased in ice. Finally, it gives one last quiver (Tifa’s never eating jello again), and collapses back into goo.

“Well this just has Hojo written all over it,” Cloud says, flicking gook off his sword in disgust.

“The more I hear about this guy, the less I want to hear about this guy,” Tifa says, dislodging Cait so she can try and get the worst of the stuff off her clothes.

“Ooh, materia!” Cait says, immediately investigating the safe.

“Mine!” Yuffie shouts, diving forward.

Somehow, Aerith beats them both to it. “Huh. This materia is…”

“Don’t say weird,” Cloud says.

“…unusual.” Aerith’s holding it gingerly with two fingers. “I don’t think it likes me.”

“Materia doesn’t have a personality,” Cloud says.

“Shows what you know,” Yuffie scoffs. “Let me see.”

Aerith shrugs and holds it out.

“Yeesh,” Yuffie says, not actually touching it. “I see what you mean. Why don’t you keep that one, and I’ll just hold on to Spiky’s ice materia for him.”

Cloud pats down his pockets quickly. “Hey!”

“This was the only other thing in there,” Cait says, holding up a small plastic rectangle.

“So is that a key, or are we supposed to use the materia?” Cloud asks. “Guess there’s only one way to find out.”

Waving the materia around does nothing to the wall, though they’d all swear that the materia is grumbling. Aerith wraps it in a spare shirt and stuffs it in the outer pocket of her pack.

Cait has barely taken two steps forward with his rectangle when there’s a metallic click and half the wall slides open, revealing a staircase spiraling down into darkness.

“I don’t like this,” Tifa says. “And if the key was still there, then clearly Sephiroth isn’t hiding down here. So we can just move on.”

“Except he can apparently pass through solid floors now,” Cloud reminds her. “Or at least solid deck plating.”

“Besides, terrible excuse for a human being though he is, Hojo is a meticulous note taker,” Aerith says. “We might find something about what’s happened to Nibelheim, or about Zack.”

Cait hops back up on Tifa’s shoulder. “That may be, but I’m sticking with you.”

They edge down the steps, which are damp and slippery in places and crumbling away in others. There’s no railing, of course.

“Now why couldn’t Hojo have slipped and broken his damned neck and done us all a favor?” Cloud mutters, placing his feet very carefully.

“We should be so lucky,” Aerith says.

“It’s not so bad,” Yuffie calls, presumably from the bottom of the steps. She just ran right down, of course. Freaking ninja. “If you like the dark.”

“They have a secret door, but couldn’t throw together the gil for a light?” Tifa asks.

When they’re finally clustered at the base of the stairs, crashing into each other in the pitch black, they stumble about until they see the faint glow of an electric torch in the distance.

“Seems as good a direction to go as any,” Cloud says, and no one has a better idea, so that’s what they do.

“Um,” Yuffie says. “You ever have one of those things that you’ve always wanted to say, but not really?”

“I’m sure I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Cloud says.

“Zombie apocalypse!” Yuffie shouts, sprinting past the rest of them.

“Wha—oh, shit!”

They run, throwing open the first door they see and piling inside.

“I’ve got this!” Yuffie says, throwing her quake spell before anyone can stop her.

There’s a loud rumble, the earth splits open, and the zombies fall in. An eternal minute later, the walls stop shaking and the house doesn’t fall down around their ears.

“Give me that,” Tifa says, snatching futilely at Yuffie’s materia.

“Nope! And it worked just fine, so—nah!” She sticks her tongue out.

“Please tell me I was never fifteen,” Tifa mutters to Aerith.

Aerith just laughs at her.

The room they’re in is well-lit, comparatively, and full of rotting coffins.

“You notice there’s kind of an aesthetic, here?” Cait asks. “Ghosts, zombies, coffins.”

Tifa absently flicks him off her shoulder and into the dirt.

“Gah! Bugs! Bugs!”

“On a more serious note,” Aerith says. “This is very un-Hojo-like. Why have these? Bodies return to the Lifestream, it’s only in stories that they rise again as undead, slavering hordes.”

Everyone stares at her.

“What?”

“You read too many horror stories,” Cait says. “They might not be coffins. Maybe they’re just… storage boxes. In weird shapes.”

“Nothing but more bugs in these,” Cloud says, flipping open lids. “And he’s a scientist, this isn’t exactly a sterile environment. Maybe it’s part of the haunted house story, trying to—ahhh!”

There’s a body in the last one.

“It’s a vampire,” Aerith whispers. “Back away slowly, or it’ll drain the life right out of you.”

Red eyes snap open and they all jump back. “Who comes to wake me from my nightmare?” it asks, in an almost impossibly deep voice.

Tifa tries not to cower too obviously. Didn’t she say the Mansion was haunted!? She's so going to say I told you so.

“We did,” Cloud says, putting on his most stubborn expression. “What’s it to you? Maybe you should be thanking us.”

The vampire rises up to its feet, so fast she misses the movement, or maybe he can fly like Sephiroth can. “Thanking you? I am atoning for my sins.”

“Serving penance,” Cait says.

They all look at him, even the vampire.

“Uh,” Cait says, and ducks behind Tifa’s legs. “Atonement means doing something to make up for your sins, penance is punishment for its own sake. Just saying.”

The vampire blinks. “Is that a talking cat? How long have I been asleep?”

“It’s actually a robot,” Tifa says. “Like a computer, but it moves and thinks. More the former than the latter.”

“Hey!”

The vampire just looks more confused, then shakes its head. “Never mind. Get out of here. There’s nothing but nightmares in this place,” it intones.

“Yeah, no kidding,” Cloud says.

“…what do you mean?”

“Oh, just that I’ve had the dubious privilege of experiencing Hojo’s hospitality.”

The vampire growls. “Hojo. I should have killed him when I had the chance.”

“Yeah, I know the feeling.”

“Is he here?”

“Oh… no, we don’t think so. We’re looking for Sephiroth, actually.”

“…Sephiroth?”

“You know Sephiroth? Was he here?”

“…long ago.”

There’s a long pause.

“And?”

“And I’ve been sleeping in a coffin,” the vampire says, a hint of dry humor in his voice. “I have seen nothing.”

Yuffie huffs. “Well that was a big build-up for a whole lot of nothing.”

“What do you mean he was here long ago?” Cloud asks.

The vampire shrugs.

“Okay, I’ve had about enough of this,” Tifa says. All those horror stories didn’t say anything about vampires being damn annoying. “Sephiroth clearly isn’t here, so we need to keep looking.”

“Yes, leave,” the vampire says, settling back down in his coffin. “Leave me to my… penance. You’ve brought new nightmares in your wake, and I must reflect on them.”

“Yeah, whatever,” Yuffie says. “This haunted mansion thing has been one big disappointment.”

They stick their heads out, but the zombies have either all died (again?) or are elsewhere.

The next room is much more promising, filled with wall-to-wall bookshelves.

Oh, and Sephiroth.

“Sephiroth!” Cloud shouts, more from surprise than anything.

“But seriously, how did he get in here?” Aerith whispers.

This Sephiroth seems more alert than the ones outside, and a bit more coherent. “So many memories…”

“What are you doing here?” Cloud asks.

Sephiroth blinks, seeming to notice them for the first time. “Are you here for Reunion?”

“For what? What’s Reunion?”

“Mother calls us… can’t you hear?”

“Hear what?”

“Always calling…”

“I think he’s just crazy-pants,” Yuffie says, tugging on Cloud’s sleeve.

“You are not worthy!” Sephiroth announces, pulling out a materia and throwing it at Cloud. “Stay away from the Temple!”

Cloud’s so surprised that he doesn’t even try to dodge, doubling over when it hits him right in the solar plexus.

Sephiroth takes the opportunity to fly off.

“Well, that’s a thing that happened,” Tifa says, sighing.

“I can’t believe he _threw_ a materia at me,” Cloud says, huffing. “Has he forgotten how to use it? He used to be the best.”

“The best in Shinra maybe,” Yuffie says, snatching up the materia. “Pretty.”

“At least this wasn’t a complete waste of time,” Aerith says. “Sephiroth was here, and he even told us where he’s going.”

“Yeah, except what temple does he mean? We have dozens of temples in Wutai, despite Shinra’s best efforts to destroy them.”

“Well, Hojo’s all about researching the Ancients, right?” Cait asks. “So probably he means the Temple of the Ancients.”

“On the Northern Continent?” Aerith asks.

“No, that’s the City. Shinra archaeologists think that was the original Ancient settlement. But there’s a Temple in the south, it’s supposed to have all sorts of indecipherable writing covering the walls. An archaeologist’s dream, except that everyone who’s ever gone inside has disappeared forever.”

“Huh. My mom never mentioned anything about that.”

Cait shrugs. “It’s not a secret, you can find it on any official map.”

“One day, you’re going to explain how you know all this stuff,” Tifa says.

Cait tries to look cute and harmless.

“You’re not fooling me, buddy.”

“Sounds like we have a real lead,” Cloud says. “An Ancient temple, an experiment that thinks he’s an Ancient… we should definitely check this place out.”

“Ah yes, how clever we are to make this deduction when Sephiroth told us exactly where he was going.”

Cloud glares.

“I don’t suppose by ‘in the south’ you meant ‘a bit south of Nibelheim’,” Aerith asks hopefully.

“Er, no. South of Midgar actually, not too far from Mideel.”

“But very far from us,” she says, glumly. “How are we going to get all the way over there?”

“I don’t want to go all the way back to the Eastern Continent,” Yuffie says. “I just left there.”

“Well?” Cloud asks, looking at Cait. “You seem to be the idea guy. Cat. Robot.”

Cait shrugs. “There’s nothing in Nibelheim, we’d be lucky to get a working car, let alone a plane. But there’s an airfield in Rocket Town, and that’s just over the other side of Mt. Nibel.”

“I hate flying,” Cloud says.

“Well, Cloud can just walk across the ocean, then,” Aerith says.

“Oh, ha ha.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Tifa says. “We’ll head to Rocket Town, see if we can wrestle up a flight.”

“I will accompany you.”

Tifa’s very proud of herself for not jumping out of her skin.

“Oh look, it’s the vampire,” Yuffie says.

“I am not a vampire. I am a Turk.”

“You’re with Shinra?” Cloud asks.

“I’m retired.”

“Turks don’t retire,” Cait says. “That’s just a euphemism for dying.”

“Yes.”

There’s a pause.

“You’re not doing a good job convincing us you’re not a vampire,” Yuffie says.

“I, too, have known Hojo’s ‘hospitality’,” the not-vampire says, looking at Cloud. “Your journey, will you see him?”

Cloud shrugs. “Probably, eventually. He’s pretty obsessed with Sephiroth.”

“Good enough.” He looks at Cait. “I have recently been persuaded that my attempts at atonement have been… insufficient.”

“You can’t just rise from your grave and tag along with us,” Tifa says. “We don’t even know your name.”

“Vincent.”

“ _Valentine_?” Cait squeaks.

They all look at him.

“Vincent Valentine, like Veld’s partner?”

“Yes.”

“But you’re like a legend! Veld said you were the best sniper he’d ever seen!”

“People still remember that?” Vincent asks, looking pleased.

“So you’re good in a fight,” Tifa interrupts. “You’re still Shinra; why should we trust you? No offense, Cloud.”

Vincent shrugs. “You shouldn’t. But I could help you on your quest. Does your cat robot know why I was retired?”

“Call me Cait. And no, it’s classified.”

“Not surprising. I was a part of the project that originally created Sephiroth.”

There’s a long silence.

Vincent raises an eyebrow. “Is that worth something to you?” 

~*~

“…and that’s the whole story,” Vincent says.

“Fucking Hojo,” Cloud says.

“So, I hate Shinra as much as the next person, but I don’t really see how any of this was your fault,” Yuffie says. “Hojo’s a bastard, Lucrecia has terrible taste in men, and neither of them should ever have been allowed to science.”

“He deceived her,” Vincent insists. “I should have done more.”

“Sometimes people just have to make their own mistakes.”

“Yeah, I have to agree with Yuffie on this one,” Tifa says. “It was sort of romantic and sweet at the beginning there, but you can’t _make_ someone love you, or stop loving someone else, even if they’re obviously the absolute dregs of humanity.”

“I feel like I’ve been insulted in there somewhere,” Cloud says.

Tifa whacks him on the back of the head.

“I could have been there for Sephiroth,” Vincent says. “He was raised by _Hojo_.”

“Well, that wasn’t actually your responsibility,” Tifa says. “I mean, you could have, but Hojo did shoot you, so… uh, how did you survive that again?”

Vincent hunches into his cloak. They’ve all come to know that tell after the last few days, struggling to get up and over Mt. Nibel.

“Is this information relevant to us?” Cait asks. Weirdly, the robot has been the most successful at getting Vincent to talk.

Vincent hunches up further. “Hojo was attempting to splice summons into my DNA,” he mumbles into his cloak. “Maybe to try and stabilize me, but probably just to see what would happen. And when it looked like I would die anyway, Lucrecia did the same. But definitely to try to stabilize me. Which she did. But there were… side effects.”

Tifa stops walking. “Side effects like what?”

“Sometimes the creatures break free of my control and take over my body.”

“And… is that likely to happen now?”

“I have spent decades working on my control. I am much improved.”

Which was not a ‘no’.

“It sounds like you weren’t in a position to take care of Sephiroth, then,” Aerith says. “You were trying to take care of yourself. And everyone around you, in case you lost control.”

“Hmm,” Vincent says.

“Ha, I win,” Aerith says smugly.

“Okay, so what exactly are you so mad about, then?” Tifa asks. “Your girlfriend dumping you isn’t your fault, Hojo being Hojo really isn’t your fault, so…?”

Vincent huffs. “He _shot_ me.”

Tifa has seen the monstrous three-barreled thing that Vincent calls a gun, and even without Cait’s fanboying there've been enough monsters to prove what a crack shot he is. And she already knows what a weedy little bastard Hojo is. “Well, fair enough.”

“I don’t suppose there’s any chance you told us everything you know about Sephiroth?” Cloud asks.

“And risk becoming unnecessary?”

Cloud sighs.

“I understand the urgency of your… quest,” Vincent says. “I have told you everything that I believe could be useful, and trust that you will not waste the resource that I represent.”

“Well, we let Yuffie stick around,” Cloud says.

“Hey!”

“Let?” Aerith asks, but very quietly.

Tifa snickers.

“We should probably make camp,” Cloud says. “It’s starting to get dark out.”

“I will keep watch,” Vincent says.

“You always keep watch,” Aerith says. “Wouldn’t you like a break?”

“I’ve been sleeping for thirty years. Besides, I have no tent.”

“Sorry about that,” Cloud says. “We can try and get another one in Rocket Town.”

Vincent shrugs. “The cold doesn’t bother me.”

“Of course it doesn’t.”

“Well, I’ll come sit with you for a bit,” Aerith says, leaving Tifa with the tent and cooking things and plonking herself down next to Vincent.

Tifa rolls her eyes but starts setting up their things without comment.

“So how are you doing? You haven’t been awake very long, after all.”

“Fine.”

“You can eat with us, you know.”

“I do not require it.”

“Well, sure, but it’s still _fun_. Well, maybe not all this stringy wolf. We can go out to a restaurant in Rocket Town, maybe.”

“Ooh, we should get Wutaian food!” Yuffie shouts.

“Apparently we’re getting Wutaian.”

Vincent shrugs.

“Are you sure you don’t need anything? It’s too bad Barret isn’t here still; I think his entire pack was full of bullets.”

“I retrieve the ones I use and bend them back into shape.”

“Oh. Okay.”

Tifa watches them as they sit in silence for a bit. Vincent is a quiet guy, but she’s betting on Aerith. She’s stubborn as hell.

“Oh, hey, is that a materia slot?”

He looks at his gun. “Yes.”

“He can’t have my poison materia!” Yuffie calls.

“Don’t listen to her; I’m sure you could steal it if you wanted to.”

“Could not!” Yuffie says.

Because she’s watching for it, Tifa sees his lips quirk slightly. Aerith 1, Vincent 0.

“I have more materia,” she says. “I’m guessing you can use it? That looks like a custom job.”

“I can now.”

Aerith rummages around and comes up with her bangle. “Let’s see. Looks like just lightning, I gave Cloud my other stuff. Cloud!”

“What’s this?” Vincent asks, retrieving the mystery materia from her pack.

“Oh, that one’s not very, uh, friendly.”

He raises an eyebrow.

“It’s kind of hard to describe, you’ll… see…”

She trails off as the materia slots itself into his gun of its own volition.

“…huh.”

Vincent examines it closely. “It seems fine.”

“Yeah, I guess it does.”

“Aerith, are you coming to eat or what?” Cloud asks, propping sticks up around the fire and swearing as they keep falling.

He’s not much of a cook.

“Yeah, coming,” Aerith says.

“Aerith,” Vincent says.

“Yes?”

“Thank you.”


	8. Chapter 8

“Know why they call it Rocket Town?” Yuffie asks.

“Look, it wasn’t funny the first twenty times…” Tifa says, not with any real expectation that she’ll actually let it go.

“But look at it! It’s so—”

“Please stop,” Cloud says. “I can’t listen to another round of this. Besides, you’re like ten, you shouldn’t even know about this stuff.”

“Definitely compensating,” Yuffie says, snickering. “I can’t wait to meet whoever built that thing. Bet it’s a guy. A short guy. With a—”

“Yuffie!” 

~*~

Tifa has never been to Rocket Town, and is expecting something like the port at Junon.

What she gets is Nibelheim, except instead of Mt. Nibel looming over them there’s this big, rusty rocket.

That she can’t even look at, thanks to Yuffie.

“It doesn’t look functional,” Aerith says.

They all try not to snicker because they’re mature adults, except Vincent, who apparently has no sense of humor.

“There was an accident a while back,” Cait says. “The space program is on indefinite hold.”

“Well, lucky for us, the Temple isn’t in space,” Tifa says. “Let’s just find a flight and get out of here before someone notices us.”

Except the ‘airfield’ is covered in grass and weeds, and there isn’t a single airship to be seen.

“Well, crap.”

“Look, let’s just buy some more supplies and poke around, maybe something will turn up. Unless Sephiroth flew himself there like a bird, he would have had to come looking for transport, too,” Tifa says.

“Or he went back to Costa,” Cloud says.

“…right, or that. And we can meet back at the inn and buy Vincent a sandwich or something.”

“That’s really not necessary.”

“Especially since they don’t even have a Wutaian restaurant here!” Yuffie says.

Nevertheless, they all disperse quickly. Town resupply is an invaluable opportunity for them to stop living out of each other’s pockets for a few precious minutes.

Rocket Town’s so tiny that they pass each other a few times, but by the unspoken rules of resupply pretend not to notice each other. It’s possible no one explained this to Vincent, but his personality naturally lends itself to minding his own business.

Tifa gets some food and a new pair of boots—all this walking is very hard on footwear—in exchange for some monster bits she’s been hoarding, and chats a bit with the locals. They have a great deal to say about a certain captain—the head of the local Shinra forces?—but haven’t seen a man in a black cape. Either Sephiroth is getting sneakier (unlikely), or he found another way.

She’s the last one to the inn, and notes with considerable amusement that everyone has bought Vincent a sandwich. She makes sure to order an extra big one before joining them.

Vincent sighs, but picks up a sandwich.

“All I’ve got is that we should talk to the captain,” Yuffie says. “I think he’s like the emperor or something?”

“Not an army captain?” Tifa asks.

“He’s an astronaut,” Cait says. “Captain Cid Highwind.”

“What’s an astronaut?” Aerith asks.

“That means he’s someone who flies in space.”

“I thought no one’s ever done that.”

“He wants to be the first. _Really_ wants. He hasn’t shut up about it once since Palmer canceled the project. He's sent about thirty emails a day for the last couple of years.”

Once again, Tifa wonders where Cait gets all his information. “We’re not actually trying to get into space, though?”

“He also has a private plane,” Cloud says. “I saw it. His wife said I’d have to ask if we could borrow it.”

“He’s not going to let us just walk off with his plane,” Aerith says. “Do any of you even know how to fly?”

They all look at each other.

“I could look up a manual,” Cait says, “but I don’t think I could reach all the controls.”

“I can fly,” Vincent says unexpectedly. “But my knowledge may be somewhat… outdated.”

“Well, we’ll consider that for an emergency,” Cloud says. “Maybe this Captain Highwind will be interested in doing us a favor.” 

~*~

 He is not.

 ~*~

 “We should probably go,” Tifa says. “Rufus is on his way.”

“Yeah,” Yuffie says. “And I bet he’ll be in an airship.”

“…that’s a terrible idea.”

“You got a better one?” 

~*~

They lurk around the side of Cid’s house like, well, like criminals, on the assumption that since Cid is apparently the authority on everything in this town, it will be here that Rufus will come.

They’re half right, because after an extremely boring couple of hours, Palmer turns up.

“Who is this?” Vincent asks.

“That’s Palmer, he’s head of the Space Program,” Cait says. “Which, since there isn’t one anymore, is a zero-responsibility job. Perfect for Palmer.”

Cid materializes out of nowhere just a few seconds later, so either that rocket has windows or he has fantastic timing.

“Shera! Bring the man some tea!” he bellows.

“Tea’s in the cupboard and kettle’s by the sink!” a woman calls back.

He grumbles, swears a few times, and puts the kettle on.

“His wife,” Cloud whispers.

“I hope not,” Tifa whispers back. “But I can deck him for her if she likes.”

Cid turns with a decidedly manic grin. “Do you take anything? Sugar? Lemon?”

“Sugar and honey, and plenty of both!” Palmer says. “And perhaps a touch of lard?”

Cid’s smile stretches impossibly further. “Right! Of course! Coming right up!”

“This is painful,” Tifa says. “He must really love space.”

“Would the President like some tea?” Cid asks through gritted teeth.

Palmer slurps. “Dunno. Why don’t you ask him? He’s waiting for you outside!”

Cid swears and hustles out the door. “Mr. President! I got your message! You’re interested in restarting the space program?”

Rufus crosses his arms and looks supremely unimpressed. “That money dump? Not hardly.”

Cid trips over his own feet. “Wait… what?”

“I need to borrow the Tiny Bronco.”

For just a moment, Cid looks like he’s about to burst into tears. Tifa doesn’t know this guy at all, and he’s clearly an asshole, but still. She certainly knows what it’s like to be fucked over by Shinra.

Then the moment passes and Cid is incandescent with anger, swelling up and trying to loom even though Rufus is more than a head taller than he is.

“And what makes you think I’m going to let a little shit like you walk off with my Bronco?”

“Guess we’re not offering him tea anymore,” Cloud says, looking delighted at seeing Rufus get sassed.

“We need to head after Sephiroth,” Rufus says, unintimidated.

“The fuck do I care what you want? You took my funding, you took my airship, and you’d take my rocket too if it weren’t so damn heavy. Now you’re trying to take the damn sky!? Get the hell out of my town, asswipe!”

“Ah yes, the Highwind. That piece of floating scrap metal has given us nothing but problems.”

Tifa’s pretty sure Cid’s eyes are about to bug out of his head.

“Scrap metal!? That’s my baby you’re talking about, you piece of shit!” He’s spitting in his enthusiasm, much to Rufus’s disgust.

“I see,” Rufus says, wiping his face carefully. “Let me use smaller words, then. It’s my name on the side of that plane, and my money that built it. So bring it out here, or I’ll shoot you and take it over your dead body.”

“Excuse me,” Shera says, right in Tifa’s ear.

She just barely stops herself from decking the woman in the face. “Don’t sneak up on me like that!”

Shera looks supremely unimpressed. “Aren’t you folks trying to steal the Bronco?”

“Uh, not steal, exactly,” Cloud says, flushing and rubbing the back of his neck.

Aerith rolls her eyes. “We’re not with Shinra, if that’s what you mean. We just need a ride. We offered to pay.”

Shera gives them all a hard look, and Tifa can’t imagine what she sees. Wanted terrorists would probably be an improvement.

“Well, that will just have to do,” Shera says. “Come with me.”

“Why?” Yuffie asks.

“Because Palmer’s trying to steal the Bronco while the Captain is distracted, and I think he’d rather you had it.”

“You don’t know us at all,” Cloud says.

“But I do know Palmer.”

“Well, I’m convinced,” Cait says. “Let’s go steal the plane!”

They sneak around back, where Palmer is banging on the controls and muttering to himself.

“We’ll be taking that,” Cloud says, stepping forward.

“Ack! It’s you! Avalanche!” Palmer shouts, falling out of the cockpit and landing flat on his back. “Oof! Stop-stop right there!”

“We’re… never mind,” Cloud says. “It’s not even worth threatening you. Just… go away.”

“No!” Palmer says, struggling to his feet and pulling out a gun. “Surrender!”

“I think not,” Vincent says, pulling out his much more impressive gun and leveling it right between Palmer’s eyes.

“Yikes!”

“Oh, just let him go,” Cloud says.

“Why? I think this falls well within my area of expertise.”

“Eh?” Palmer says.

“Turk,” Vincent says, showing all his teeth.

Palmer starts backing away.

“Uh, is it just me, or is the plane moving?” Cait asks.

Palmer hears it at the last second, throwing himself flat before he gets his head taken off. “Ha ha!”

Not two seconds later, a troop transport slams right into him, sending him catapulting into the trees.

“I can’t even hate that guy, he’s too lame,” Yuffie says.

“There’s no one flying the plane,” Tifa says, which she thinks is really the most urgent issue here.

Vincent takes two steps and leaps neatly into the cockpit. “Let’s see…”

“Woohoo!” Yuffie shouts, running after him and latching onto a wing. “I’ve never flown in a plane before! This is Yuffie style!”

“Good grief,” Tifa says, joining the others as they scramble onto the plane. “Please tell me you know what you’re doing, Vincent.”

“Hmm,” he says, which could mean ‘of course’ but just as easily could mean ‘we’re all going to die’.

They do actually get up in the air… but too high, too fast.

They start to fall back down.

“I think I have it,” Vincent says, even as they start nose-diving towards the ground.

“If you’re going to crash, aim for Rufus,” Tifa says.

“I don’t like flying much,” Yuffie says, looking green.

“Not that I’m accusing you of anything, Vincent,” Tifa says, “but would you survive this crash?”

“Probably. And if not, I can fly under my own power.”

“I hate you. Just so we’re clear on that.”

They pull up at the last minute, almost giving Rufus a new haircut in the process.

Cid looks apoplectic. “That’s my fucking plane!!!”

He doesn’t look like one of Hojo’s experiments, but somehow he manages to grab hold of a wheel and hang on, without dislocating a shoulder, even. Must be the force of his rage.

“You set her down right now, you hear me!?”

Tifa ducks as the distinct sound of gunfire adds itself to the cacophony of the engines.

Cait ducks down behind Vincent and out of the line of fire.

The plane has steadied out and seems to actually be flying rather than just not crashing, so naturally that’s when at least one of the shots connects.

“Was that a Shinra trooper?” Cloud asks. “When the hell did they learn to aim?”

“We’re hit!” Cid shouts, breaking off mid-tirade. “Tail’s on fire! You’ll have to bring her down!”

“We’re over a forest,” Vincent says calmly. “If I put her down now we’ll definitely explode.”

“Don’t you dare bail out, Vincent!” Tifa shouts.

“I’ll pray,” Aerith says.

“Here, just let me…” Cid somehow climbs up the landing gear, over the wing, across Tifa and Cloud, and hooks his legs in the back of the cockpit so he can hover over Vincent’s shoulder. “Left. No, turn left, not move it left, you daft fool! Where’d you learn to fly?”

“Now that is backseat driving,” Cait says, and gets tossed over Cid’s shoulder. “Hey!”

Yuffie snatches him out of the air, then throws up.

“I have mixed feelings about this,” Cait says, trying not to touch his fur.

“That’d better not have gotten on my plane!” Cid shouts, then goes back to badgering Vincent.

Somehow, probably by sheer willpower on Cid’s part, the plane stays in the air over a forest, a cliff, and a beach infested with giant, armored tortoises, finally giving out and crashing in the sea.

Overall, it could have been a lot worse. They’re alive, and they have the plane.

Sort of.

“You are dead,” Cid groans from where he’s been thrown into the (thankfully no longer on fire) tail. “As soon as I can move, I’m killing all of you.”

“I probably can’t die,” Vincent says helpfully.

“You’re all nuts,” Cid says.

“So, we’re probably not getting to the Temple of the Ancients on this,” Cloud says, eyeing the plane critically.

“But we’re not sinking,” Aerith says. “Thank you, Goddess. We always appreciate a practical miracle every now and again.”

“You’re not going anywhere in my plane,” Cid says. “Except to Hell. Because I’m going to kill you.”

“Whatever, old man,” Yuffie says, much happier now that they’re not in the air. “This thing is remarkably seaworthy. Could we get the engines going again, you think?”

“No!” Cid says, and is ignored.

“How’s that going to help?” Cloud asks. “We’re have to go around the whole continent, it’d take weeks.”

“We could go to Wutai, instead.”

“And why would we do that?” Cait asks from where he’s very carefully washing himself with the ocean water. “Wutai isn’t allowed to build airships.”

“Excuse me!” Cid bellows.

They stop talking.

“No one is going anywhere on my plane except me!”

“Well, we’re not going anywhere without it, either,” Tifa says. “Seeing as we’re now in the middle of the ocean, and this is the only boat-like thing around.”

“You don’t seem to like Shinra much,” Cloud says. “So what are you so upset about, anyway?”

“What am I upset about? _What am I upset about!?_ My plane’s a fucking boat, blondie! How stupid can you be?”

“We’re on a mission to save the world,” Aerith says virtuously. “And to stick it to Shinra.”

“Huh. Rufus, too?”

“Of course.”

“Well, that’s a worthy cause if I ever heard one. Fine, I’m in. But only until I get my plane fixed! Not like I want to die here with you losers, anyway.”

“Great,” Cloud says, without enthusiasm. “Do you think you can float us over to Wutai?”

“I’m the best pilot on the Planet, I’ll get us there,” Cid says, practically falling into Vincent’s lap in his single-mindedness to reach the controls.

Looking distinctly amused, Vincent extracts himself and goes to investigate the tail.

Tifa sighs. “This is going to take a while, isn’t it.” 

~*~

They eventually wash up on shore, and their food has been gone for less than a day, so the voyage could charitably called a success.

“Get the hell off my baby and don’t let me see you for at least a week,” Cid says.

“But… yeah, okay,” Cloud says. “Whatever. Did you have something you wanted to do here, Yuffie?”

“Yes,” she says, and darts away. “See you around, suckers!”

Cloud closes his eyes. “My materia is gone, isn’t it.”

“I’m not going to get up and look, but I assume yes,” Tifa says.

“Huh,” Vincent says. “She even took mine. She is not without skill.”

“Well, she left my mom’s, so it’s fine,” Aerith says. “We can do without.”

“We’re not doing without,” Cloud says, glowering as he clambers out of the plane. “We need that materia to fight Sephiroth and save the Planet. We’re going after her.”

“That’s a terrible idea,” Tifa says.

Aerith shrugs and climbs down after him. “Just think of the trouble he’ll get into without us.”

“Serves him right,” Tifa grumbles, but follows her.

“And stay out!” Cid shouts. He glares at Cait.

Cait holds his front paws up defensively. “Hey, you’re an engineer, I’m a machine, we could have some real bonding time here.”

“Do you have a wrench attachment for those paws?”

“No… but I have opposable thumbs!”

“That’ll do. Bring me that toolbox.”

Tifa and Aerith hurry after Cloud, and after a few seconds Vincent appears at their side without comment.

“You haven’t known Yuffie long,” Aerith says.

“Long enough.”

She laughs. “Well, hang back with us, then. She’s a lot funnier when it’s someone else who falls for her schemes.” 

~*~

“That was entertaining,” Vincent concedes.

“Shut the hell up,” Cloud says from inside the cage. At least six cats converge on him and begin purring loudly. “Not a word.”

Tifa’s laughing too hard to talk anyway. 

~*~

“But why did she even have that cage? She must have set that up before she even left home? Who booby-traps their own basement?” Cloud complains, still trying to get all the cat hair off his clothes.

“It’s Yuffie,” Tifa says.

Vincent suddenly goes very still.

They all tense up, even though everything looks normal. Well, it’s more colorful than she’s used to, and the architecture is wholly unfamiliar, but there aren’t any giant robots or zombie hordes or anything.

“Is it Yuffie?” Cloud asks.

Aerith kicks him.

“Turks,” Vincent says.

Cloud looks around. “Are you sure?”

Vincent gives him a look.

“Sorry.”

“They just went in there.”

“Well,” Tifa says, cracking her knuckles. “Let’s go say hello.”

She refrains from kicking down the door—barely—and immediately spots them.

“Well, if it isn’t our old friends,” she says, baring her teeth. “Have I mentioned how very much I’m looking forward to kicking your asses again?”

Reno takes a defensive step back, but his partner doesn’t even blink. Not that it’s easy to tell behind those sunglasses.

“We don’t have time for you right now,” Rude says. “Elena has been kidnapped.”

“Why doesn’t that surprise me?” Cloud asks, coming up beside her. “She’s so green you’d lose her in a field.”

“Wow, look at you, talking the talk,” Aerith says, bumping his shoulder playfully.

“You lost your rookie?” Vincent asks, sounding cold and very unimpressed.

Reno and Rude both jerk their heads up like they’ve been mortally insulted. “What’s it to you, freak?”

“What’s it to you, _sir_ ,” Vincent says.

Reno looks him up and down. “You’re not a Turk.”

“Retired.”

“Bullshit. Turks don’t retire.”

“Hojo retired me. Look it up.”

“Do we have a problem here?” Cloud asks. “Is there some kind of Turk solidarity oath that we should know about?”

“It no longer applies,” Vincent says. “But I might still look out for a rookie, out of the goodness of my heart.”

“Uh, no?” Reno says. “We don’t need any help. Right, Rude?”

Rude adjusts his sunglasses. “Somehow, I doubt we’re going to be given much of a choice.”

“So let’s kick their asses!”

“And Elena?”

Reno sighs. Loudly. “Whatever.”

“Uh, Vincent? Can I have a word with you?” Tifa asks, grabbing a handful of cloak and dragging him outside. “We’re not on the same side as these assholes! They dropped the Sector 7 plate and killed practically everyone! Plus, they’re assholes! And Turks!”

“You needn’t accompany me,” Vincent says. “I know you have your own… pursuits.” He walks off.

“Maybe we should go with him,” Aerith says.

“Not you, too!”

“Consider this: it’s been at least an hour since Yuffie last did anything humiliating to Cloud. Do you really think she’s that patient? And there’s someone about who’s canny enough to kidnap a Turk.”

“Aw, hell,” Cloud says. “It’s just Elena, she probably walked right into it.”

“And if you remember, Yuffie stole our stuff and ran off,” Tifa says.

Aerith just looks at her.

“Ugh, fine. I guess it would be really embarrassing for those two assholes if we saved their friend right under their noses. I’ll make sure they thank us properly.”

“That’s the spirit,” Aerith says, clapping her on the shoulder. “Now let’s go!” 

~*~

They finally find Yuffie and Elena captured by, of all people, former-Don Corneo.

“So this is where you crawled off to, worm,” Tifa says, raising her fists. “I can’t tell you how much I’ve been looking forward to giving you a good pounding.”

“I’m a powerful man!” he says, sweating. His eyes are darting back and forth frantically.

If Tifa gave two shits about him, she’d feel bad for him.

As is, she feels a genuine smile overtaking her face.

“They’ve chosen to be my brides!” Corneo shouts.

“They’re in chains,” Aerith says. “They clank when they walk.”

“Jewelry!”

“You’re sick.”

Then a bunch of troopers burst onto the scene, and in all the confusion Corneo disappears.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Tifa says. “I’m going to toss the lot of you into next week.”

“You know, you’re kind of hot,” Reno says.

She kicks the next guy into his head.

“They went this way,” Vincent says, when the dust settles.

Corneo has lost none of his flair for the dramatic, because in the few minutes they’ve been fighting he’s somehow managed to chain them to the one of the stone faces carved into the mountains behind the city.

“How did you get here so fast?” he demands. “I haven’t made my choice yet!”

“This is a sacred mountain!” Yuffie shouts. “Leviathan’s going to squash you!”

“I don’t believe in your little gods,” Corneo says.

“Well I do, and I’m feeling _very devout_ right now. I’ll shove my shuriken right up your ass! In Leviathan’s name!”

“Well, you seem to have everything under control,” Reno says.

“Reno! Rude!” Elena says.

“I like you, little Wutaian,” Corneo says. “You’re saucy.”

“I’m going to hurl, seriously,” Yuffie says.

“You’re under arrest,” Rude says, “for crimes against Shinra.”

“And then we’re going to kill you, for crimes against humanity,” Tifa says.

“Well that’s not much incentive to come quietly,” Corneo says, smirking. “Take care, or I’ll let them drop and they’ll fall to their deaths.”

Vincent sighs. “This is embarrassing. Try to have some style.”

“What? Who are you? I’m not messing around! You have no idea how I’ve suffered! I’ll tell you the whole, sad tale!”

“Please don’t,” Aerith says.

“I’ve got a button!” Corneo shouts, waving a small box around. “I’ll push it! I will!”

Very reluctantly, the Cloud, Tifa, and the Turks hang back. Vincent isn’t even paying attention, busy fiddling with his gun.

“Ha ha, that’s got you!” Corneo starts edging back. “I’ll just be going, then. Guess I got the last—”

He falls back, blood blossoming on his chest.

“Nice shot, Rude,” Reno says. “Good timing.”

Rude inclines his head.

But as his head disappears over the edge, Tifa sees that the bastard is smirking. “Wait—”

With a loud click, the manacles retract and Yuffie and Elena both fall.

For once in perfect accord, Avalanche and the Turks both take a futile, horrified step forward.

With a deafening crack-boom—the thing’s a goddamn hand cannon, seriously—Vincent fires twice.

Both girls cry out as their chains jerk—and hold.

“The hell did you do?” Cloud asks.

“Shot the chains. Armor-piercing rounds, drove the them right into the rock.”

“Damn,” Reno says. “That? Was badass.”

“Get me down!” Yuffie shouts. 

~*~

“I’m going to loan this to you,” Yuffie says, handing back the restore and lightning materia. “Because you’re saving the world, and whatever. Make sure you bring it back.”

“This is our materia,” Cloud says. “And where’s the ice?”

“It’s going to the restoration efforts. For the glory of Wutai!”

“Listen here, you—”

Yuffie skips out of the way. “I have to go run and tell my dad about Sephiroth and Planet Life theory and everything. Back in a few!”

That leaves the Turks and Avalanche together.

“So…” Aerith says.

“You going to bring us in?” Cloud asks.

Tifa scoffs. “You can try.”

They all look at each other.

“Eh,” Reno says. “It’s our day off.”

“We could resume our meal,” Rude says.

“I could eat,” Vincent says.

Tifa glares. “You don’t even eat! Stop hanging out with them!”

“He eats,” Cloud says. “He ate like six sandwiches in Rocket Town. It was uncanny.” He wilts under Tifa’s glare. “I mean…”

“I’m not eating with you,” Reno says. “We’re enemies. We weren’t even cooperating just now, it was just a coincidence. Back me up, guys!”

“I think they saved me,” Elena says, trying unsuccessfully to cozy up to Vincent.

Tifa throws up her hands. “Fine, whatever! Vincent, you want us all to hang out together? You’re officially peacemaker. Keeper. Argh!” She stalks off.

“It’ll be fine,” Aerith says, patting her shoulder.

“I had a gun called Peacemaker, once,” Vincent says.

Reno, Rude and Elena all laugh.

“ _Turks_ ,” Tifa mutters under her breath. 

~*~

An excruciating meal later, Yuffie finally turns up again. She’s wearing an elaborate, ceremonial-looking headdress with a red materia prominently displayed in the center.

“I’ve been chosen as the new leader of Wutai!” she announces.

Tifa drops her glass.

“I won the tournament and Leviathan chose me and now I’m pretty much running the place.”

“Interesting method,” Reno says.

Yuffie blinks. “Why are you guys still here?”

“We’re going,” Rude says, and the three of them saunter out, not a care in the world.

Tifa hates all of them.

“So, Shinra needs to be stopped, like, yesterday,” Yuffie says. “So I’ll be staying here to organize a resistance.”

Cloud breathes a (loud) sigh of relief.

Yuffie kicks him. “I know you’ll miss me.”

“Of course,” Aerith says. “Call us any time.”

“I’ve got one more materia for you,” Yuffie says.

“My ice?” Cloud asks hopefully.

She laughs, and hands Vincent his materia. “Apparently it’s a summon, like Leviathan. And it’s chosen you. Better take good care of that!”

Vincent takes it thoughtfully. “I shall.”

“Well, it’s been real,” Yuffie says, and backflips out the door.

“I think I’m really going to miss her,” Tifa says.

“I can’t feel my leg,” Cloud whines. 

~*~

They pick up some food, all unfamiliar Wutaian specialties, and a tent for Cid, who doesn’t have anything more than the clothes on his back.

And a surprisingly seaworthy plane.

After some debate, they decide to give Cid some space and splurge on a comfortable night in the inn.

The next morning, they find that Cid has somehow bullied the locals into getting him all the supplies he needs for the repairs, as well as providing free labor.

“Free? I told them you’d pay for it!” is his idea of a greeting.

“Is the plane going to fly?” Cloud asks.

“Of course! I’ve got my pride!”

Cloud sighs and counts out the gil.


	9. Chapter 9

“Does this plane run on mako power?” Aerith asks, giving the small plane a fond pat. It doesn’t seem to have suffered any ill-effects from it’s brief sojourn as a boat.

“What, the Bronco? No, Shinra doesn’t share those engines with anyone. I need old-fashioned oil to run this baby. A pain in the ass to find these days, but worth it, if it means I can fly. Why?”

“Apparently mako energy is destroying the Planet,” Cloud says. “So if you want there to be a sky to fly in, keep using those old-fashioned engines.”

Cid swears. “But the Highwind has a mako engine!”

Tifa cranes her neck to look at him. “The what?”

“My airship!”

“You named your airship after yourself?”

“Shut up. And you, up on the wings there, stop leaning to the left, you’re throwing off the steering!”

Vincent obligingly leans right.

“Crazy fucker.”

“Well there isn’t room to sit, even after you modified the cockpit,” Tifa points out.

“The plane is only so big, girl. Like I told you, squish in or swim for it, that’s the choice. I didn’t say a word about clinging to the damn wings.”

“We managed fine the first time.”

“You mean when you crashed my damn plane? Don’t remind me.” Cid glares at the horizon.

“And anyway, you weren’t aboard yet, but Vincent says he can fly.”

“No shit?”

“No shit,” Vincent says dryly.

“Well, fuck me. There’s a _useful_ superpower.”

Vincent shrugs. “Not really.”

Cid grumbles under his breath. “So, anyway. Where’s this Temple of yours? You weren’t very specific.”

They all look at Cait, curled up in Aerith’s lap. “Er… south of Midgar?”

“You have got to be fucking with me right now.”

“I can find it,” Aerith says. “You said the other Cetra city was in the north?”

Cait nods. “So?”

“Then the the Temple is that way,” she says, pointing.

Cid raises both eyebrows. “And you know that how, exactly?”

“I can feel it. There’s a tremendously powerful source of energy that-a-way,” she points almost due north, “and another one over this way. Since we don’t want that one, it must be this one.”

“Right. You know what, I don’t even want to know. Not like I care about whether you lot actually get where you’re going or not. Long as I still get paid.”

“Wait, what?” Cloud asks. “We’re not paying you. And I just spent all my gil fixing this damn thing!”

“You watch your mouth about my baby. And I believe payment was mentioned when you tried to _steal my fucking plane_!”

“How about this,” Tifa says. “We’ll put you in touch with our friend, Barret. He’s looking into alternative energy sources, like reopening the Corel mines. He might be interested in looking into oil fields. Unless you can get your airship to run on coal?”

Cid snorts. “Not likely. I suppose I might be able to put together an oil-based engine for the Highwind. Hmm.”

He opens a drawer, producing some old paper and a stub of a pencil, and starts sketching against the dials. The plane lists to the right.

“Fly now, draw later!” Tifa shouts.

“I can do both, quit your backseat driving.” 

~*~

Despite Cid’s distraction and the unusual means of navigation, they successfully locate a temple.

“Hopefully this is the place we want,” Cloud says. “After we’ve gone all this way.”

“Well, that’s a promising sign,” Cait says, pointing.

“Aww, is that the Turks’ helicopter?” Tifa asks. “How do they keep finding us?”

“We are both seeking the same thing: Sephiroth. You might say, we are finding them.”

Cid looks up, and up, and up. “Couldn’t those Ancient whatevers have put in an elevator? Maybe I’ll stay with the plane.”

“Come along,” Vincent says, taking his elbow and just refusing to let go.

With a choice between walking or being dragged, Cid opts for walking. But he’s very vocal with his displeasure.

“This was definitely built by the Cetra,” Aerith says. “I can hear their voices. They’re happy that I’m here.”

“Is that good?” Tifa asks, in between breaths. She’s in good shape, but this is a lot of steps. It’s giving her flashbacks to the raid on Shinra HQ.

“It’s not good or bad, just a thing.”

Tifa looks over. Aerith looks very distant and otherworldly as she listens to voices only she can hear. Tifa reaches over and squeezes her hand. “Okay.”

They’re walking at a steady pace, and soon overtake Vincent and Cid.

Cid has stopped to wheeze.

“Maybe lay off the cigarettes?” Tifa asks sweetly.

He flips her off.

“I’m surprised Vincent didn’t just carry you.”

“He can fucking try.”

Vincent shrugs and quirks a half-smile. “We will catch up.”

“Hey guys, you’d better see this!” Cloud shouts down.

With his SOLDIER stamina, he probably just ran the whole way.

There’s a red blur, and Vincent is suddenly just gone.

“Damn it!” Tifa shouts, willing some life into her muscles as she runs after them, Aerith right beside her, Cid’s swearing fading into the distance.

She skids to a stop just over the threshold, only just missing a rapidly growing pool of blood. “Cloud! Are you—”

“Tseng!” Aerith shouts, crashing back into the same reality as the rest of them.

Well, sort of. Tifa’s reality doesn’t usually include crying over Turks.

“Oh, dear,” Cait says.

Tseng coughs, a nasty, wet sound. “Aerith?”

“Shh, don’t talk! You’re going to be okay!” She fumbles with her restore materia. “Just… hold on.”

“Stab wound,” Cloud says. “Let me guess. You got in Sephiroth’s way?”

Tseng glares at him.

Vincent doesn’t exactly elbow anyone out of the way, but somehow he and Aerith are now the only ones near Tseng. “Report, Turk.”

Tseng blinks at him. “Who are you?”

“Veld’s partner.”

“Valentine?”

“Does everyone know you?” Cloud asks.

Vincent nods.

“Veld trained me.”

Vincent and Tseng look at each other.

“Sephiroth came through about an hour ago,” Tseng says. “We heard he was seeking something within the Temple and came to try and remove it first. But he was already here. He killed the troopers and attacked me so he could get the keystone.”

“The keystone?”

Tseng chuckles, which is pretty creepy since he’s bleeding all over the place. “It opens the door, though you don’t really need it for that. Explosives will do, or even just a good crowbar. But without the keystone, you can’t get back out.”

“So… is Sephiroth trapped, then?” Tifa asks. “Should we just… go?”

“According to Professor Gast’s research, the Temple is mixed up with a prophecy, or a riddle, or possibly both. This is all ancient legend, so it’s not very clear. But presumably, the solution must also provide another way out. Sephiroth didn’t try and take the keystone, and I certainly couldn’t have stopped him.”

“Guess it’s up to us,” Cloud says. “Where’s the keystone?”

After some more secret Turk telepathic communication with Vincent, Tseng hands over a blue orb that looks exactly like materia. “Here. Finish the job.”

“We don’t take orders from you,” Tifa says.

“I think I’ve stopped the worst of the bleeding,” Aerith says. “There isn’t anything else I can do!”

“I am much improved,” Tseng says. He struggles to his feet. “I’ll go down to the helicopter… call for backup.” He shuffles by.

“Should we stop him?” Tifa asks.

Cloud waves a hand dismissively. “Just let him go, for now. By the time he gets down all those stairs we’ll be long gone. Sephiroth is our first priority.”

“Then what are we waiting for?”

“Hey… what’s… going on?” Cid asks, leaning against the wall and gasping for breath. “Wasn’t that… Commander Tseng?”

“Commander?” Vincent echoes. “Interesting.”

“Hurry up, slowpokes!” Cait says. 

~*~

They step through the “entrance” and find themselves in the middle of a maze of towers, old buildings and creeping vines in every direction. There’s no sign of where Tseng almost died.

“Well, this explains why none of the expeditions ever came back,” Cait says. “Were we transported somewhere, or is this all an illusion?”

They all look at Aerith.

She shrugs. “Beats me.”

“Well, let’s go look for Sephiroth, then,” Cloud says. “I can’t wait for this to be over; that guy always gives me a headache.”

“Also the world might be ending,” Tifa reminds him. “Priorities, Cloud.”

It’s bright and sunny, but instead of being cheerful, that just emphasizes the eerie emptiness.

“Oh, hey, there’s someone in here!” Cloud shouts, poking his head into one of the buildings.

They all come running.

“Is he an Ancient?” Cloud asks, standing well back.

“Just a ghost,” Aerith says sadly. “He chose to tie his spirit to the Planet, to guide future visitors.”

The specter smiles and nods.

“How many hundreds of years has he been here?” Cait asks. “I wonder if he could tell us anything about the Ancients. How they lived.”

“You’ll have to come back later and ask him,” Cloud says, not unkindly. “Sephiroth isn’t here, so let’s keep looking.”

“He says to take care,” Aerith says, hurrying after them. “The Temple is protected.”

“Protected by what?” Cloud asks, and is nearly crushed when a massive boulder appears out of nowhere. “Oh. Never mind.”

The path is very narrow, too narrow to dodge of walk around the rocks.

“Maybe this isn’t the way?”

“Don’t be a damn fool,” Cid says. “Whatever the most dangerous path is, that’s the right way. Haven’t you ever seen a movie?”

“Well if you’re so smart, then how do we get past?”

“I might be able to build a glider…”

“Hey, look,” Cait says, lying on his back on the ground. “The rocks aren’t solid all the way through.”

“I get it,” Tifa says. “If we time it carefully, we can stand in the gaps and the rock will roll right over us.”

“ _Excuse_ me?” Cid says.

“Hmm,” Vincent says. He darts forward, runs up the side of one of the huge boulders, then jumps to the next one. “It isn’t far!” he calls back.

“I bet I could do that,” Cloud says.

Tifa grabs him by the back of his sweater. “Why don’t you put those SOLDIER reflexes to good use showing the rest of us the timing. If you really need to show off, you can lift one of them off you when you screw it up.”

“Aww, Tifa…”

“Vincent, come back and carry me!” Cait shouts.

No one gets squished, not even Cloud, when they meet up with Vincent by a perfectly round, perfectly blue pool of water.

“You’re halfway there,” Vincent says.

Aerith goes to look at the pool.

“Something strange about the water?” Tifa asks, sitting beside her.

“I feel like the Planet is trying to tell me something. I think I need to pray.”

“Um, okay. Do you want me to stay with you?”

“Cid can stay with me. You will be needed, ahead.”

Tifa just lets that one go.

Cid jumps at the sudden address. “Eh? Oh, sure. I’ll just… be over here, then.” He finds a stick and starts scratching at the dirt, presumably drawing more engines.

“I’m sticking with you,” Cait says, leaping onto Vincent’s shoulder.

“Hnn.”

The next room has a giant clock with twelve numbered doors.

Cloud groans. “Oh great, more puzzles.”

“It’s likely that ten of these doors lead to certain death,” Vincent says.

“So everyone remember how to get back to Aerith!” Cait says.

Tifa quickly whirls around. “Door number ten.”

“But where do we go now?” Cloud asks.

They look; all the paths look the same from here.

“Well, there are six of us,” Cait says. “Number six?”

Tifa shrugs. “Why not?”

“But there’s four of us here,” Cloud says.

“Don’t overthink it.”

In the next room is an Ancient ghost in front of an elaborate door. He looks right at them, pulls a key out of the lock, and disappears into a tunnel.

“I am so done with this,” Cloud says, and jumps on him the second he reappears. Using those mako-enhanced muscles, he leaps easily back up to the rest of them. “Now, you can give me the key, or I’ll just carry you over there.”

“That’s Aerith’s ancestor,” Tifa reminds him.

The Ancient ghost laughs and disappears, leaving the key.

“Well, it worked,” Cloud says. “Come on.”

The next room is covered in murals, and Ancient writing.

“You know who would be really useful right now?” Tifa asks, glaring at the walls. “Aerith.”

“Most of it’s pictures,” Cait says. “Looks like some kind of natural disaster. A meteor crash.”

Cloud jumps.

“Trip over your own feet again?” Tifa asks, without sympathy.

“Sephiroth! He was here!”

The others exchange glances.

“Um… Cloud? No one’s here but us.”

“I heard him!” Cloud insists. “Right after you said that thing about the meteor, he said ‘not hardly’!”

“No, I’m pretty sure that’s a meteor,” Cait says.

Cloud flinches violently. “There he was again! Didn’t you hear him?”

“What did he say this time?” Tifa asks.

“That there was nothing natural about that meteor!”

“Okay…”

“He keeps talking about the knowledge of the Ancients, and becoming one with the Planet! He’s crazy!”

“ _He’s_ crazy?” Tifa mutters.

“Oi, I see him, too!” Cait says.

Way at the other end of the room, Sephiroth is leaning against an altar.

“Sephiroth…” Vincent says, freezing in place.

“But he was just over there…” Cloud says, looking off to his left.

Tifa huffs. Obviously, she’s going to have to be the one to do something. “What are you trying to accomplish here?”

“I told you, he wants to become one with the Planet,” Cloud says.

She rolls her eyes.

“Exactly,” Sephiroth says.

She tenses. What?

“The Lifestream is the life’s blood of this Planet. When the Planet is harmed, it redirects that energy to heal itself, draining it away. The bigger the injury, the bigger the drain.” Sephiroth waves his sword for emphasis, a fanatical light in his eerie green eyes. “Imagine the energy needed for a fatal injury, the awesome power of it, just waiting for someone to use it!”

“Injure the Planet? Drain the Lifestream? You’re crazy!”

Sephiroth ignores her. “By merging with that energy, I will become a new being, achieve a higher form of consciousness. I will be a god, sailing the darkness of the cosmos with this planet as my vessel.”

“No, _that’s_ crazy,” Cait says.

“And how exactly do you plan to inflict this fatal injury, then?” Cloud asks. “Mako reactors? Was this Shinra’s plan all along?”

“Shinra? Ha! They are too blind to grasp the true possibilities!”

“How come he can hear Cloud?” Tifa asks.

“I think the more troubling issue is how Cloud can hear him, even when we can’t,” Cait says.

“Behold!” Sephiroth throws out his arm, the one holding his sword, and almost decapitates all of them. “The ultimate destructive power: meteor!”

With that, he pulls his usual flying trick, disappearing through the wall.

“The black materia…” Cloud whispers, his pupils so wide there isn’t a hint of blue left. “The calamity from the skies…”

“Cloud? Cloud!?”

He grabs at his head, whimpers, then keels over.

Tifa barely catches him before he hits the floor. “Crap.”

“Um, guys?” Cait says.

Where Sephiroth had just been standing is an enormous, red dragon.

“Double crap.” Tifa pushes Cloud behind a pillar. No help from that quarter. “Vincent! Pull yourself together!”

Cait throws himself to the side as a pillar of fire shoots towards him, singeing his tail. “Yikes!”

Tifa gets to her feet. Cloud’s out of it and Aerith and her materia are way back by the pool. Cait’s mysterious shouting ability is probably going to be about as useful against a freaking dragon as her bare fists. “Vincent! Now would be a really good time to do something legend-worthy!”

“Like what, shoot the weak spot?” Cait asks, climbing up onto her shoulder. “That’s only in the movies!”

Vincent shakes off his funk and levels his gun at the thing.

“I was being sarcastic! Don’t actually shoot it, you’ll just piss it off!”

Instead of pulling the trigger, Vincent taps the materia Yuffie returned to him, which starts to glow.

Blindingly. Tifa has to close her eyes.

When she opens them again, there’s a massive guy in armor on an eight-legged horse in the room with them.

“Um,” she says.

He has some kind of giant pole-arm, and rides straight at the dragon with deadly intent. The fireblasts seem to pass right through it, and in one, smooth motion it cuts the monster in half.

“UMM,” she says again, louder.

“Well _that’s_ handy,” Cait says.

“And none of my doing,” Vincent says. “Odin chose to defend us.”

“Odin?” Tifa echoes weakly. Odin was worshipped in Nibelheim as the god of death, back in her grandmother’s time, before Shinra. But gods don’t just pop out of materia and rescue people, that’s not how the world works.

“Is everything all right?” Aerith asks, running into the room. “We heard roaring!”

“Holy shit!” Cid shouts, spotting the two halves of the dragon. “The fuck have you guys gotten up to?”

“Sephiroth wants to become a god, Cloud fainted, and Vincent summoned an elder god and killed a dragon,” Tifa summarizes. “And what have you been doing?”

“He wants to use the black materia, right?” Aerith asks. “The pool isn’t really water, it’s the memories of all the Cetra. They remember when Jenova first came to this Planet, on a meteor that later became the black materia.”

“So… this is actually a thing that could happen? Wipe out all life on the Planet, become a god?”

“Jenova almost succeeded, and the Cetra almost died out as a race trying to stop her. Now there’s just me.”

“But Sephiroth isn’t Jenova, either,” Vincent says. “Hojo injected Lucrecia with Jenova cells while she was pregnant, but that’s only a very small portion of her power.”

“The Cetra say that Jenova was telepathic. So long as there’s even a little bit of Jenova inside Sephiroth, her main consciousness can communicate with him, even control him.”

“Fuck,” Cid says. “I don’t know if I followed all that mumbo-jumbo, but still. Fuck.”

“I do have some good news,” Aerith says.

“Well, let’s hear it,” Tifa says. “I think we could all use a little good news.”

“The Cetra created a weapon that finally stopped Jenova, and that weapon still exists today.” She holds up her cheap bangle with the mysterious white materia.

“You can’t be serious.”

“Well, my mom made me swear to guard it with my life. The Cetra were just showing me how to activate it when we heard all the commotion.”

“So should you go back and commune with your ancestors some more?”

“No need. Everything else about the Cetra depends on praying for guidance from the Planet, and their extremely roundabout explanation was obviously leading up to the same. But we can’t do it right now; it can only be activated in the same place it was created, in the old Cetra capital up north.”

“So we should head north right away?”

Cloud groans. “No, we can’t.”

Tifa hurries to help him sit up. “What is going on with you?”

“Besides wishing that my head would just fall off already? No idea. But we can’t just leave the black materia here. What if Sephiroth comes back? We don’t know how fast Aerith’s secret weapon is going to work.”

“It’s called Holy,” she says.

Tifa rolls her eyes. “Of course it is.”

“The materia seems to be stuck,” Cait says, poking at it. “Another puzzle?”

Aerith tilts her head, listening. “Yes. The model is linked to the Temple itself. When you retrieve the materia, the Temple will fold in on itself and cease to exist.” She frowns. “All this knowledge, lost…”

“So we can leave it then?” Cid asks. “Either Sephiroth doesn’t figure this out and never gets the materia, or he tries to get it and dies. Win-win.”

“I guess you haven’t seen them yet, but somehow there’s dozens of copies of Sephiroth running around,” Tifa says. “We don’t know if they’re clones or ghosts or whatever, and most of them don’t seem to be able to talk, but he has plenty of highly expendable choices to throw away trying to get the materia. The one we just met seems to be the real one, so my guess is that he’s on his way to fetch a copy right now.”

“Damn.”

“Lucky for us, we also have an expendable member of our party!” Cait says.

Tifa whirls on him. “Wha—oh. Right.”

“I’m just a robot, getting caught in a collapsing temple can’t hurt me. Might be interesting, actually.”

“But… you have a personality, and everything,” Aerith says, distressed. “You’re a friend.”

“That’s really sweet, but that’s not really me. There’s a human consciousness controlling this body.”

“A Shinra employee,” Vincent says.

“Now, don’t go giving away my secrets!”

“You’re Shinra?” Tifa demands.

“Lay off, Tifa. Really, who isn’t? Except Aerith, maybe,” Cloud says.

“And me!”

“Right, and you.”

They glare at each other.

“Oh look, a materia!” Cait says loudly.

“What, and now you’re secretly Yuffie?” Tifa asks.

“That wasn’t there before,” Vincent says.

“Maybe it’s the dragon,” Cait says.

“It’s definitely something special,” Aerith says, picking it up. “I think it’s looking for someone.”

“Like Vincent’s,” Tifa says. “Can I hold it?”

Like with all materia, she doesn’t feel anything. Annoying.

They pass the materia around, but apparently it doesn’t like anyone.

“Maybe this means we’re going to make a new friend?” Aerith asks.

“We could send it to Nanaki,” Cloud suggests.

“The end of the world is still nigh,” Tifa reminds them.

“Right, I’ll just hold onto this for now,” Aerith says. “Cait? Are you sure you want to do this?”

“You mean instead of sending one of you to certain death, or waiting until the Planet explodes? Yeah, I’m sure.”

“Well… thank you.”

“It’s really not that big of a deal. I’ll miss Cait, but if the world doesn’t end, I can build another one. And who knows, maybe I’ll meet you all for real someday.”

“Yeah, so I can punch you in the face,” Tifa says, but gives Cait an affectionate sort of pat, anyway.

“This is all very touching,” Cid says, “but maybe you could get your asses in gear?”

“Right.” Cloud holds up the keystone. “Um, exit?”

Nothing happens.

“Lying Turk.”

“Well, there clearly isn’t another door in here,” Tifa says. “Might as well start looking.”

“Just give a holler when you see something,” Cait says. “I can wait.”

They step out into the clock room, and the hands start spinning of their own accord, then lock into a new position.

“I think we should go that way,” Aerith says.

“Good thing we have you here to translate for the Planet,” Cid says.

Tifa elbows him.

“We found the door!” Cloud shouts.

Cait must hear them, because the whole building starts shaking.

“Definitely time to go.”

He touches the door, which comes to life and tries to bite him.

“I hate this place.”

Tifa sighs, then kicks a questing appendage back. “Vincent, if you have any more tricks, this would be a good time.”

“As a matter of fact, I do,” he says, and transforms into some kind of monster.

“That guy is handy in a fight,” Cid says, warding off another attack with his spear.

“No kidding,” Tifa says. “Welcome to the unnecessary part of the team, by the way. Aerith and Cloud throw magic, Vincent does whatever the hell he’s doing, and we stand here and try not to get eaten.”

“This part of the team sucks.”

“Yeah, I almost miss all those Shinra stooges. If a problem can’t be solved by kicking it in the balls, it shouldn’t exist, you know?”

“Er, whatever you say.”

The door is eventually subdued, Vincent goes back to his usual shape, and they make tracks out of there with the whole place falling in around their ears. Tifa leaps for solid ground and covers her head as they’re all showered in debris.

When she can look again, there’s a giant hole in the ground where the Temple used to be, and a single, black materia sitting innocuously at the bottom.

“I’ve got it,” Cloud says, standing up.

Tifa pushes him back down. “Nice try, coma boy. How about someone carry the materia who hasn’t developed sudden fainting spells?”

“But—”

She ignores him and slides down.

All this talk of legendary alien monsters and Planet-wide destruction has got her nervous, but absolutely nothing happens when she picks it up. Her cargo pants aren’t so new anymore after crossing the entire Planet and back again, but they still have a number of nice, big pockets. She slips the materia into one of them and climbs back up.

They barely have time to take a breath before Sephiroth reappears.

“Give me the materia,” he says.

Tifa scoffs.

“Okay,” Cloud says, and punches her in the face.

“What the hell?”

She rolls with the hit, moving her jaw gingerly. She doesn’t _think_ it’s broken, but damn, Cloud can hit hard. Then she has to roll again, his sword landing in the space she just occupied.

“Little help, guys!?”

The rest of the team breaks out of their shocked stupor and bursts into action.

Vincent pins Cloud to the ground, inhuman strength against inhuman strength. “I will see that he harms no one. Including himself.”

“Give me the materia!” Sephiroth shouts, angry now, and flies at Tifa.

“Go fuck yourself!” she shouts, not her cleverest line, but her mouth really fucking hurts. She rolls to her feet, picks a random direction, and runs.

Aerith throws a lightning bolt between her and Sephiroth, putting a little distance between the two of them. “I won’t let you hurt Tifa!”

“Or destroy the world, let’s not forget about that,” Cid says, taking a defensive position by her side and raising his spear.

Tifa keeps running, leaving her friends to deal with Sephiroth alone. 

~*~

When her legs won’t carry her any further and all sounds of the conflict have died out—she shakes her head, refusing to even think the d-word—Tifa creeps back to the clearing.

“You’re okay,” Aerith says, breaking into a wide smile.

“And Sephiroth?” Tifa asks, edging out of the treeline.

“Dead,” Cid says. “I stabbed him right through the heart.”

Tifa looks at the body. It certainly looks dead. “Huh.”

“Cloud passed out at the same time he died,” Vincent says. “He’s still breathing, but he’s totally unresponsive.”

“We should take him to a hospital, then. Midgar?”

“Mideel would be better. They specialize in mako-poisoning so may have some idea what to do with a SOLDIER, and Shinra HQ isn’t right in the middle of it.”

“Good point.”

Everyone looks at each other.

“So… did we win?” Tifa asks. “Is the world saved?”

“I’m still having that vision of bringing Holy to the Forgotten City,” Aerith says. “The Planet is very… insistent.”

“Seems like the end of the world is one of those things you want to be very careful about,” Cid says. “I’m not taking you anywhere near the Northern Continent. It’s fucking freezing and the wings will ice up. But I can give you a ride as far as Junon, then take this guy to Mideel.” He nudges Cloud with his foot.

“That’s probably for the best,” Tifa says. “Something happened to him there, and I have a feeling that Cloud and the black materia should be nowhere near each other until Aerith does whatever it is she’s doing.”

“I could go by myself,” Aerith suggests.

“And how are you going to get there, walk? Don’t be ridiculous. Vincent, you in?”

He nods. “I do not believe in leaving a job half-done.”

Tifa takes out the materia. It doesn’t _look_ like it heralds the end of life on this Planet. She looks at Sephiroth’s cooling body, and Cloud’s unconscious one. And sighs.

“Well, I suppose that could have gone a lot worse.”


	10. Chapter 10

They sneak back into Junon without incident. Goodbyes are short because Cloud is still completely out of it, occasionally conscious but even worse than when Tifa first found him at the train station.

Hopefully the people in Mideel can help him.

They have a choice of transport to the Northern Continent. Is it usual to have some much traffic there? Or is Shinra up to something?

There’s no way to tell, and nothing to do about it even if they did know, so they pick the biggest ship on the theory that it will also be the fastest (and easiest to sneak around on), and that’s that.

They don’t encounter their first obstacle until they’ve actually made it to land, which, considering how this trip has been going, Tifa considers something of a minor miracle.

“That’s right, just north of here is the mythical City of the Ancients,” the guy says, trying to look mysterious. “Would you like an authentic Ancient pendant as a souvenir?”

“No,” Tifa says shortly. “So how do we get there? Is there a path or something?”

“A path of _enlightenment_ ,” he says. “We have a fine meditation center here, and if you stay at the inn, we’ll even throw in a discount!”

“I’m more interested in an actual, physical path. One that you can walk on.”

“Oh, we don’t have any of those.”

Tifa glares and adjusts her gloves pointedly.

“I’m serious! Anyone wanting to go on to Icicle has to go by helicopter! Or over the mountains by sled, but I do _not_ recommend that. That’s why they call the City of the Ancients ‘the Forgotten Capital’. Because it’s been forgotten.”

“Wow, thanks for clearing that up.”

“But there is a _legend_ ,” he says, trying and failing to sound dramatic.

Tifa sighs. “Tell me.”

“The Ancients are said to have a secret road through the Sleeping Forest, but it’s impassable by mere mortals. There’s a song in the air, and after only a few minutes you—”

“Let me guess? Fall asleep?”

“Exactly! Never to be seen again!”

“Has anyone tried wearing earplugs?”

He gives her a dirty look. “I don’t think you have the proper respect for Ancient customs.”

Aerith makes a strangled noise, reaching for him, but Vincent has been restraining her since they saw the first gaudy advertisements for Authentic Ancient Artifacts. And he is not a guy who moves unless he wants to.

“Whatever,” Tifa says. “The Ancients could hear the same range of sounds as the rest of us, except they could also hear the Planet, and I’m still not convinced that’s actual, physical hearing. So if humans are affected by the magical lullaby, so were the Ancients. How’d they get through? According to legend.”

“You are a scholar?” He gives her a dubious and highly insulting once-over. “In that case, I have an excellent deal for you, half off admission if you go to the library _and_ the museum—”

She picks him up and gives him a good shake. “Summarize it for me.”

“Err, right. Legend speaks of an artifact, a harp, that played music that could drown out the power of the forest.”

“So has anyone tried just banging on their canteen or bringing a radio?”

“That would be insulting to the Ancient ways.” He wilts under her glare. “And yes, of course someone’s tried that. Didn’t work. Lucky they were locals and had ropes tied around their waists. My own grandfather was part of the team!”

“So where’s this magic harp supposed to be, then?”

The guy waves a hand, and suddenly the holes riddling the ground take on a new significance. “Where do you think? We’ve been searching for a hundred years!”

“It’s an Ancient artifact?” Tifa asks, slanting a glance at Aerith.

She scowls but closes her eyes, concentrating. “It’s there.”

“Now, hold on,” the guy says, grinning. “It’s a hundred gil each to hire a man to dig for you, up to five per attempt.”

Aerith, out of patience, grabs him and drags him over to her chosen place. “Go there. Dig a hole. And your pendant says ‘moron’!”

“Can I at least have a shovel?”

She throws one at his head.

He meekly starts digging.

Aerith glares at Vincent and Tifa, daring them to comment.

“Nicely done,” Vincent says. “Very direct.”

“I wouldn’t have given him the shovel,” Tifa says.

Aerith smiles. 

~*~

The villagers want Aerith to authenticate their souvenirs and pose for pictures, probably trying to make more money, but that’s the nice thing about being in a forest that’s deadly to everyone else.

“Actually, I think the ‘song’ is the Planet,” Aerith says, finally relaxing now that they’re away from Bone Village. “It’s very close here. The Cetra probably had no trouble navigating this forest, but it was a natural barrier to the humans.”

“So they made this harp thing so their human friends could visit?” Tifa asks.

“Maybe. I like that idea.”

“Why am I the one playing the harp?” Vincent grumbles. 

~*~

It doesn’t take long to reach the City, the road is very direct.

“It’s so… empty,” Aerith says, tears in her eyes. “I knew I was alone, but…”

“Never alone,” Tifa says, hugging her tight enough to lift her right off the ground.

It's a desolate sight. Like at the Temple, there are carvings and stories on every wall, immortalizing their history and culture. But everything is silent and starting to crumble with age. Old and dying.

“I don’t want to stay here,” Aerith says, rubbing her arms like she’s cold.

“Then we will be quick,” Vincent says. “Where do you need to go?”

“Right.” She squares her shoulders. “This way.”

They find another one of those eerie, round pools, just like at the Temple, and Aerith throws her blanket on the ground to spare her knees and starts praying her heart out.

Tifa and Vincent look at each other.

“I could start a fire? Maybe there will be something to eat around here.”

“We should be prepared.”

She puts down the cooking pot. “Prepared for what? Ghosts?”

“We were followed here.”

“Who could follow us through the Forest? _We_ had the harp.”

“Unless they were a Cetra. Or thought they were.”

She swears. “Sephiroth? We killed him!”

“Did you not say that you have encountered dozens of clones?”

“…right.” She kicks her pack into the shelter of a rock. “So he’s following us, now? That’s a twist.”

“He must still be seeking—” He cuts himself off and disappears in a red flash.

“Hey, what—oh, never mind.” Looks like all those dozens of clones have figured out which foot goes in front of the other, because they’re here.

Tifa casts a quick glance at Aerith, obliviously praying and entirely vulnerable, then sets her stance.

They’re not getting to Aerith while she’s still standing.

These are the stupid, awkward clones, and they struggle with navigating the cracked pillars that serve as stepping stones to Aerith’s location. Not big jumpers, apparently. A few fall in the water, deeper than it first appeared, and with any luck they’ll all drown.

The first one reaches their refuge and she boots it right back off, and the fight is on.

She’s greatly outnumbered, but could hardly have chosen a more defensible position if she tried. They have to come in ones and twos because of the terrain, and she has the high ground.

Plus, there’s something cathartic about punching Sephiroth in the face over and over again.

Instinct tells her to duck, and she flattens herself on the ground just in time for a sword to whistle through the space where her head had been. How did he get behind her?

She rolls over, tensing for a kip-up, and sees one Sephiroth standing over her and another in the air.

Right. Some of them can fly.

There’s the distinct sound of Vincent’s ridiculous gun and the guy in the air goes down.

Tifa kicks her would-be attacker right between the legs, with enough force that he goes over the side and into the water with a very final sounding splash.

Serves that bastard right.

While she was distracted, three Sephiroths have crawled onto the platform, and she’s too busy tossing them back off again to watch her back.

Fortunately, Vincent is watching it for her.

She hadn’t known how much she trusted him until the gunfire stops and she realizes that she hadn’t looked over her shoulder once, completely confident that he had everything handled.

But now he must be out of bullets.

Crap.

She turns so she can see the access point to her little fortress and Aerith, trying to keep all potential enemies in sight.

And good thing, too, because one of the armed and flying ones—where do they keep getting these swords?—is swooping down on Aerith with deadly intent.

She’s bending her knees, gathering her energy for a jump, when something collides with him mid-air. Something with huge red wings, sharp claws and glowing eyes.

Sephiroth is ripped to shreds in seconds, and she almost has a heart attack when the monster throws something at her. A magical attack? A bomb? Sephiroth’s head?

Turns out it’s Vincent’s gun.

She gives the thing another, long look.

Well, Vincent did say he could fly.

She absently elbows a Sephiroth in the throat and sweeps his legs out from under him, tossing him in the water. She is so going to have words with that man about the necessary information one shares with one’s allies. Once he’s back in a more familiar shape, and they aren’t fighting for their lives. Or Aerith’s life.

That gets her focus back on the task at hand, and after kicking the gun over to their packs, she doesn’t give Vincent another thought, trusting him to have her back the same as before. 

~*~

Every muscle is screaming when the horde finally stops coming. She’s not so optimistic as to think that they truly got all of them, because the clones were all over the world, and this is a pretty isolated place. Logistically, some of them just wouldn’t have time to get here.

Which is fortunate for them.

“Are you okay?” Aerith asks, smoothing Tifa’s gross and sweaty hair off her gross and sweaty face.

“Big fight,” Tifa says. “Don’t worry, we handled it.”

Vincent is sacked out on the far side of the platform, but he’s in his more usual shape, so she’s tentatively thinking that he’s fine, just tired.

“What about you?” Tifa asks. “Did you do the thing?”

“Yes.” She holds up the two special materia, which instead of being pure black and white are now both a dull sort of gray. “After all these centuries, Meteor is finally neutralized, and Holy is no longer needed.”

“Well, awesome,” Tifa says, too tired and sore to get too excited. Not that she really understands all this Cetra mysticism, anyway. “So is that it, then? Sephiroth defeated.”

“I don’t know. He can’t destroy the planet with a giant meteor from space, but you heard Professor Bugenhagen. The Planet’s still dying. He could still destroy it by draining the Lifestream more slowly, or just by sitting back and letting us do it to ourselves. Shinra’s still out there.”

“I was savoring the victory over here. You’re kind of killing the mood.”

“Sorry. Oh hey, we should go swimming.”

Tifa doesn’t want to ever move again. “Or we could sit here and cuddle.”

“It’s healing water, a side-effect of Holy. Come on, up you get.”

Tifa allows herself to be carried over to the edge of the platform and stripped, and she really should have seen the push coming but her brain is as tired as the rest of her.

She comes up sputtering and cursing Aerith, dunking the laughing Cetra and splashing her liberally before realizing that she’s moving easily through the water.

“Told you,” Aerith says, stealing a kiss and ducking away, still laughing. “You feel better, right?”

“Completely. We should go splash Vincent or something.”

Giddy with their narrow escape from death and the success of their mission, they decide that it would be much better to speed up the healing process and push him in, too.

He hits the water with a giant splash, then flails around spectacularly as he gets caught up in his loose clothes.

“Healing water!” Aerith shouts from a safe distance.

“I’m wearing metal boots!”

“…oops.”

He eventually escapes the water, grumbling and wringing out his cloak and hair. “Tell me Cerberus isn’t at the bottom of the lake.”

“Nope, it’s up with the rest of our stuff,” Tifa says.

He accepts the peace offering and hangs his cloak on a rock before stretching out, apparently deciding it’s not worth trying to get out of the rest of his leather outfit.

This cross-country jaunt hasn’t lent itself to an excess of modesty, but Tifa and Aerith wrap themselves up in their blankets before joining him on the rocks. It’s pleasantly warm in here, and it’s very tempting to fall asleep.

“What next?” Vincent asks.

For a guy who slept for like thirty years, he’s sure in a rush.

“We still don’t really understand what’s going on,” Aerith says. “And I’d rather not stay here.”

“Did I hear that Icicle Inn is around here somewhere?” Vincent asks.

“Yes, it’s on the other side of the City. I was born there, but I was just a baby when I left. I don’t remember it.”

“I didn’t know that,” Tifa says.

“Hojo was mad when my dad ran off with one of his precious research specimens, better known as my mom, and he shot him, and kidnapped us.”

Vincent gently pats her arm. “I’ll rip that bastard to shreds.”

“Thanks.”

Well, this is a lot less restful, now. “Okay,” Tifa says, forcing herself to stand up. “We’ve got a plan, let’s do it. We’ll find this Icicle place, which hopefully isn’t as miserably cold as it sounds, and decide what to do next. And if we can get reception, we should see how Cloud is doing.”

“Good idea,” Aerith says, accepting a hand up. “I think I still have some clean clothes somewhere. Well, clean-ish.”

“We should bring some of this water with us,” Vincent says.

They both pause.

“Magical healing water?” he presses.

“Right, yeah, that’s a good idea.”

“And we should put the bodies there, too,” Aerith says.

Tifa looks around. Most of the Sephiroths fell in the water, especially the ones she fought, but not all. “Are you sure they’re dead? And their bodies are just hanging around? Eww.”

“The water will purify them.”

More secret Cetra stuff, probably. Tifa shrugs. “Fine. Let’s get dressed, clean up, and fill our canteens. Then we can get out of here.” 

~*~

It’s a long and difficult trip over a sheer cliff with only a narrow ladder for aid, then across a snow field. Tifa and Aerith are wearing all the clothes they have with them and still freezing.

Vincent doesn’t seem to feel the cold.

When they finally get into town they head straight for the eponymous inn, and neither put up even a token protest when Vincent offers to keep watch, huddling together under a pile of quilts in front of a roaring fire.

“I heard hypothermia is supposed to be romantic,” Aerith says, teeth chattering.

“Don’t talk nonsense,” Tifa says, trying to will feeling back into her feet.

They’re both feeling better the next morning, and Vincent actually made small talk with the locals—Tifa will believe that when she sees it—and thinks he knows where Aerith used to live.

“No one will touch the place,” he says. “They believe it to be cursed.”

“What do you want to do?” Tifa asks. “We can go around it, or go have a look. Whatever you want.”

“I think I want to see.”

So they go inside, and find a dusty but well-equipped lab, though most of the computers look like they required a little creative thinking to keep them running.

Aerith stands in the middle of the one-room hut and just looks around. Not sure what else to do, Tifa stands with her.

“I think this machine still has power,” Vincent says from where he’s poking around.

Aerith walks over and presses a few buttons.

The screen lights up in a burst of static, then the shaky image of an older man in a lab coat and a lovely woman in a red dress shifts into focus.

“Mom? Dad?”

He’s speaking about some scientific discovery or other, Tifa doesn’t really follow, and doesn’t care, and Aerith reaches out to touch the tiny figures on the screen.

Her mouth hardens. “Turn it off. I don’t want to see any more.”

Vincent turns it off, and Tifa follows her outside.

It’s so cold the tears are freezing on her cheeks.

“There’s nothing left of them here,” Aerith says. “Let’s go.”

Tifa has no idea where they’re going to go, except maybe back to the Inn before they freeze to death, but then they practically trip over that little blond Turk, Elena.

“I’m going to blow your heads off!” she shouts, probably loud enough for the whole town to hear. “You murdered Tseng.”

After feeling totally helpless in the face of Aerith’s loss, it’s nice to get angry again. “What!? No we didn’t!”

“Liar! You were after the black materia!”

Tifa could definitely take this girl, and she’s looking forward to it more than she should, when Vincent interrupts.

“We did not kill him.”

Elena stops posturing. “You didn’t?”

Tifa hisses. “What, you’ll believe him and not me?”

“He’s a Turk.”

“He had already been wounded by Sephiroth when we arrived. In the face of a mutual enemy, we formed a temporary alliance. We agreed to take over his contract to retrieve the black materia, and he retreated to the helicopter to receive medical attention.” Vincent pauses in his report. “He died?”

“Not yet. He’s hurt really bad, though. They’re not sure he’ll make it.”

“Regrettable. We achieved his objective and neutralized the materia.”

Elena sniffles, then puts on a brave face. “Well, that’s something. What are you guys doing all the way out here? Looking for Sephiroth, still?”

Vincent blinks. “Did he come through here?”

“Yeah, he was heading north. Why?”

“Because we are still looking for him.”

“Oh. Right. Well, I’m not supposed to let anyone through, but since you saved Tseng, I think I can make an exception. And don’t let the locals talk you into snowboarding down the mountain. They’re all lunatics, and there’s a walking trail. How else would they get back up? Idiots.”

“Thank you,” Vincent says.

“Yeah, thanks,” Tifa says, much more grudgingly.

“I’m sure Tseng will be fine,” Aerith says, giving Elena’s arm a friendly squeeze. “He’s strong.”

“I hope so.” 

~*~

Climbing down the mountain is rigorous enough that it keeps the cold at bay, but when they step out onto the glacier, there’s no protection at all. The cold feels like knives, and it goes right through their clothes.

“I can’t keep this up,” Tifa confesses through chattering teeth. She hates admitting weakness, but she hates people who endanger others through false pride even more.

“Me neither,” Aerith says. “I’m so cold.”

“There is no shelter here,” Vincent says. “We can’t stop.”

He’s been carrying all three packs since they got off the mountain, and if Tifa didn’t know better she’d say he sounds worried.

“You have to keep moving,” he insists.

She’s definitely going to do that, just as soon as she can make her legs move. 

~*~

She wakes up cozy and warm in a little hut.

“Here, drink this,” a stranger says, an older man with thick, white hair.

“It will help,” Vincent says from somewhere nearby.

Well, if Vincent thinks it’s okay, it’s probably okay. Tifa takes a sip, and it doesn’t have much flavor but it’s hot and seems to warm her whole body. “Okay that’s good.”

“He won’t tell me the secret,” Aerith says, sounding cheerful and teasing.

That’s enough for Tifa to relax completely. “Where are we?”

“I’m Holzoff,” the old guy says. “I used to be a mountain climber, but now I rescue idiots who aren’t prepared for the glacier.”

Tifa blushes, but she can’t really deny the appellation.

“From what he says, your friend here carried you more than a mile,” Holzoff says, nodding at Vincent. “You were very fortunate.”

“Thanks, Vincent. And you, Holzoff.”

Holzoff blushes. “Well, I was young and stupid myself, once. Thought I could take on Gaia’s Cliff with just my gear and my wits. Lost two fingers and six toes, and my buddy didn’t make it back at all.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

He shrugs. “It was a long time ago. And now that Shinra’s built a base up there, there’s no need for climbing guides like me.”

Tifa sits all the way up. “A Shinra base? What do you mean?”

“Oh, it’s been there for ages, even before I came up here. They found something up in the Crater that got them all excited. Word is that’s where Gast caught his big break.” He pauses. “Sorry, he’s kind of a local celebrity. He was born just up the way in Icicle Inn, and went on to be Head Scientis for Shinra. The rest of us have never even been off the continent.”

Tifa shifts through the layers of blankets until she can grasp Aerith’s hand.

“Found something in the Crater,” Vincent muses, on task as always. “Could that have been Jenova?”

“It’s all very hush-hush,” Halzoff says. “Could have been anything.”

“Perhaps that is what Sephiroth is seeking. How do we get to the Crater?”

“On foot? You’d have to go over Gaia’s Cliff, and that’s madness.”

Halzoff looks at three resolved faces.

He sighs. “I suppose I could give you some tips. And sell you some better gear, for a fair price! But remember what I told you; Gaia’s Cliff chews up and spits out even experienced climbers, it’s no joke.”

“This is important,” Tifa says, even though the last thing she wants to do is go back out in the cold.

“Well, fine, then. Can any of you use materia?”

Aerith raises her hand.

“The real secret is the fire materia. See, you have to periodically stop and warm yourself, or you’ll never make it, no matter how thick your coat is. The route is tricky, I’ll draw you a map…” 

~*~

With the fire materia and Halzoff’s help, the Cliffs aren’t easy, but they do make it.

There’s a tricky moment when they’re jumped by a stinking mass of writhing tentacles with a gaping, hungry mouth, but Vincent’s friend on horseback makes a reappearance, cutting it down.

“Why didn’t he help us with the Sephiroths?” Tifa asks.

“He wasn’t interested. He prefers challenging opponents, which they were not. Merely numerous.”

“We could have used the help.”

“He is not human, his interests are not the same as ours.”

“Besides, you handled it,” Aerith says, laying a mittened hand on Tifa’s thick coat. “We’re all safe.”

“I suppose.”

After that it’s just more of the usual: monster-infested caverns, freezing winds, and nothing decent to eat.

And then they’re finally over and can see the edge of the Crater.

“Let’s never do that again,” Tifa says.

“We’ll have to get back,” Vincent reminds her.

She doesn’t even want to think about that.

“Can you see something?” Aerith asks, squinting into the driving snow.

“It’s an airship,” Vincent says immediately. He has much better eyesight than either of them.

“So at least all this wasn’t for nothing,” Tifa says. “If there’s an airship all the way up here, then there’s something to see. And knowing Shinra, it’s something shady.” 

~*~

Getting into the Crater is almost as difficult as getting up the Cliff, but they’re rewarded—after a fashion—when they reach a large, sheltered cavern and find most of the remaining Shinra executives in the middle of a secret meeting.

Even Rufus is there, in an all-white snowsuit lined with fur. Scarlet and Heidegger are bickering over something while Hojo paces and lectures, waving his arms about dramatically.

“Hojo,” Vincent hisses, looking like he’s about to jump up and rip his throat out right then and there.

Which, couldn’t happen to a more deserving guy, but… “ _Sephiroth_ ,” Tifa says, tugging on his arm and turning him to face the appropriate direction.

There is yet another Sephiroth encased in a pillar of mako like some kind of elaborate tomb, but this one isn’t like the others. Even trapped in the mako and with his eyes closed, he exudes danger and threat.

This is the Sephiroth she remembers from Nibelheim.

“Wait, so, none of them were the real Sephiroth?” Aerith asks. “I’m confused.”

“As you can clearly see, Mr. President,” Hojo is saying, “all those creatures you say were only pale imitations of the real General Sephiroth.”

“So where did all these imitations come from?”

“Some of them are experiments by our enemies, meant to try and steal my greatest creation. Some are products of our own experiments, ordered by your father when Sephiroth first disappeared. And I suspect a few of them are SOLDIERs who deserted, drawn by the pull of Reunion.”

“What’s Reunion?” Tifa whispers.

Aerith shrugs.

“About my father,” Rufus says, because he’s a contrary little shit. “Did Sephiroth kill him or didn’t he?”

“He did not. The clones have only limited autonomy, and Sephiroth has been here the whole time.” There’s a fanatical light in Hojo’s eyes. “I knew he couldn’t have been killed so easily. If only I’d had more money to continue the search—”

“Well, you’ve found him now,” Rufus interrupts. He hates parting with money. “Can you wake him up? I might be willing to forget his destruction of Shinra property and desertion if he sees fit to help us now.”

“You have got to be kidding me,” Tifa says. “How stupid can you get?”

Hojo looks like all his dreams have come true.

It makes Tifa reflexively ill.

“He is alive and conscious in there,” Hojo says. “We would merely have to find a way to break through the mako shell.”

“Without hurting him?”

Hojo shrugs. “He is extremely durable. I would not place a high priority on that concern.”

“Fine, then.” Rufus pulls out his PHS, barks out a few, inaudible orders, and takes shelter behind a rock face. Scarlet and Heidegger hurry after him; their instincts for self-preservation have always been strong.

A few seconds later, the airship hums and unleashes a barrage of gunfire.

They all press up against the sheltering rocks to try and avoid the ricochet, but when the dust settles, the mako pillar is still intact.

“Hmm,” Hojo says, poking at a few tiny splinters of crystallized mako, the only signs of damage. “Conventional weapons will have no effect. We will need something mako-powered to damage a mako shell.”

“The closest mako cannon is in Junon,” Rufus says. “There’s no way we could get that up here, or fire it from the _Highwind_. There’s no power source.”

“We could use the Huge Materia,” Scarlet volunteers. “A project my department has been pursuing tirelessly, Mr. President.”

Heidegger snorts.

“We don’t need to drag it all the way here,” Hojo says impatiently. “That would be a ridiculous waste of time and effort. A mako cannon has a huge range, we can just fire it from Junon.”

“No, too far,” Scarlet says immediately. “Our tests show that it wouldn’t reach farther than Bone Village.”

“What about Midgar?” Rufus asks. “Would that be in range?”

“With six reactors to power it, definitely.”

“It would be considerably easier to move the cannon from Junon to Midgar than to try and alter it to run on an entirely new power source and haul it all the way up here,” Rufus says. “We’ll do that. Scarlet, Heidegger, make the arrangements.”

Scarlet’s mouth turns down but she goes to do as she’s told.

“Are you sure this will work?” Rufus asks.

“Positive, Mr. President,” Hojo oozes. “You’ll have your strongest weapon back in no time.”

Tifa growls. “Shit. I hate every one of those stupid, grasping, moronic fuckheads. I’d let them get themselves killed if it didn’t mean the rest of us would die, too.”

“I agree with Tifa,” Aerith says. “If Hojo thinks this a good idea, then it certainly isn’t.”

“Then get moving,” Vincent says. “We need to be on that airship if we plan to do anything.”


	11. Chapter 11

It’s surprisingly easy to stow away on the _Highwind_. Vincent is put in charge of spying on Scarlet and Heidegger, partly because this is the first time anyone has heard anything about Huge Materia, but mostly because they’re trying to distract him from assassinating Hojo.

“I won’t get caught,” Vincent insists.

“We’re on an airship,” Tifa explains patiently. “Even Shinra would think to search the ship that’s flying through the air and completely inaccessible from the outside for the assassin.”

“Not inaccessible,” Vincent grumbles. “And I could make it look like an accident.”

“This is important information to have. It might mean the end of the world,” Aerith says.

“Fine.”

Amusingly, he actually does glean a lot of information from his spy work. Scarlet is apparently a blabbermouth. And, not unjustifiably, thinks her conversations on a private airship are actually private.

Too bad for her.

There are four of these mysterious Huge Materia, one in Junon, one in Corel, one in Fort Condor, and one that they “already have” and unfortunately she does not elaborate on that.

Tifa and Aerith spend the time they aren’t scavenging for food or hiding from patrols scouring the ship for evidence of something that might be a Huge Materia, but it doesn’t appear to be on the ship.

“So is it just a really big materia, or is that some kind of codename?” Tifa asks.

Vincent shrugs. “Scarlet did not say. I could poison Hojo’s tea. There are a number of things in the galley that could be adapted.”

“Not now, Vincent. We have to deal with this Huge Materia thing, first.”

“That man is a plague on humanity. We do not even know that the Huge Materia are a threat.”

“I’m dialing and can’t hear you,” Tifa say. “Hey, Cid? How’s Cloud?”

Cloud isn’t any better, but while they were running around the Northern Continent and out of PHS range, their friends have been making friends with each other. Cid took her up on her suggestion to contact Barret about alternative fuel sources, who had been in constant contact with Nanaki and Professor Bugenhagen down in Cosmo. Even Yuffie has gotten in on the debate, reasoning that if windmills and waterwheels are going to be the next big thing, Wutai should get its fair share.

“It’s a whole thing,” Cid says, after recounting every detail of the various exchanges. He’s such an old gossip.

“So is Barret giving up on the oil thing?”

“Hell no! Can’t run an airship on gusts of wind, can you? And I’m still getting into space one day, you’ll see. And I’ll get my _Highwind_ back from those Shinra bastards, mark my words.”

“So, funny story about that…”

After she’s extracted a promise from him to meet up with them in Junon, she hangs up on his furious cursing and calls Barret.

“Hey, you ever heard of Huge Materia?”

By the time they land in Junon, Corel is rebelling, destroying and searching any Shinra facility they come across, and Cloud and Cid are already waiting for them.

Well, Cid is waiting, and he has Cloud slung over his shoulder like a sack of chocobo greens.

“Don’t see what help you think Mr. Comatose is going to be?” Cid says by way of greeting.

“I might have a cure,” Aerith says, directing him to set Cloud down in a sitting position and retrieving her canteen of precious healing water.

“Whatever,” Cid says. “Where’s my airship?”

Cloud chokes on the water and starts emanating a weird green mist.

“Um, is this a good thing?” Tifa asks.

Cloud coughs again and opens his eyes. “What happened to the Temple? Did it work?”

Cid raises both eyebrows. “That’s some water.”

“That was weeks ago,” Aerith says. “We’re in Junon now, trying to stop Rufus from using the cannon to free Sephiroth.”

“Uh, okay?”

“Also, I want you to have this.” She hands over the summon materia they found in the Temple, the one that hadn’t liked any of them. It sure seems to like Cloud now. Tifa could swear it’s purring.

Cloud stares at the materia. “Right. Okay. Who do you want me to hit?”

Tifa pats his arm. “Good boy. We can explain later. Or, try to explain.”

“So what’s the plan, then?” Cid asks.

“We have two objectives,” Vincent says. “One Huge Materia here in Junon, and one in Fort Condor.”

“What’s Huge Materia?” Cloud asks.

“We also have two means of transportation, the _Highwind_ and the _Tiny Bronco,_ and five of us, now that Cloud is able to fight again.”

“It can wait,” Cloud says. “You can tell me later. In fact, just ignore me, it's fine.”

“I’m not leaving without the _Highwind_ ,” Cid says. “I’m not letting that little bastard put his grubby hands all over her one more second.”

“Then as I am the only other pilot, I will take the _Bronco_ to Fort Condor.”

“Hey, wait a minute. I’m not letting you steal my plane _again_.”

“You cannot be in two places at once, and we must strike quickly, before Shinra gets suspicious. They have not yet realized that we know about the Huge Materia.”

“We don’t even know what it looks like! We couldn’t search the whole of Junon with five people, let alone if we split up!”

They’re interrupted by Tifa’s PHS ringing.

“Yes? Barret? I can’t hear you, you’re breaking up! It’s in the reactor? You’re sure? Just be—” She blinks at the PHS. “Dropped the call. They probably get terrible reception in the mountains, let alone inside the reactor.”

“That’s very interesting,” Cloud says dryly, “but what did he say?”

“He found the Huge Materia in Corel. It was inside the reactor, might even have been the reason the reactor blew in the first place. And then Shinra blamed it on the town instead of admitting their mistake. Bastards.”

“Well, that’s convenient,” Cid says. “Not Shinra being bastards, obviously. But if that Huge Materia’s in a reactor, you can bet the others are, too.”

“Right,” Tifa says. “And the Junon reactor’s special, it’s underwater, so it might have more safeguards, and the Fort Condor one’s been shut down for ages. A real condor came to nest on top of it and the locals have been fighting to keep Shinra from running the reactor and scaring it off. Condors are really rare, apparently.”

“So the smaller group should go to Fort Condor,” Vincent says. “The people there are already rebelling, we could sneak in or recruit them, whichever is more likely to work.”

“Aerith should go,” Tifa says. “She’s the most personable.”

They all very carefully don’t look at Cid, who is actually surprisingly personable, and especially when compared to Vincent.

“We might have to swim out of the reactor,” Vincent says. “How long can you hold your breath?”

“You’re all assholes,” Cid says. “Fine, I’ll take the magic girl to Fort Condor in the _Bronco_. But then I’m coming straight back for the _Highwind_!”

“Should I go with them?” Tifa asks. “I don’t have any superpowers.”

“We’ll have a major fight on our hands trying to get into the reactor,” Cloud says. “This is a military town and the reactor is well-guarded. Not to mention Rufus is actually here, with all the security that entails.”

“Great,” Tifa says.

“We need to move,” Vincent says. “Someone in Corel is bound to have a PHS, and once we’ve wrapped up this Huge Materia business there’s still the matter of the cannon and Sephiroth.”

“Right. We have to get this done before the cannon is dismantled,” Tifa says. “Everyone, good luck.”

Cid ignores her, watching the _Highwind_ and sniffling.

Aerith hugs Vincent, kisses Tifa, and ruffles Cloud’s hair. “Don’t mess this up now,” she says, grabbing Cid and dragging him behind her.

Tifa waves, then claps her hands together. “Okay, people. Let’s go.” 

~*~

By coming from the airfield side, they bypass a lot of the security.

Meaning they don’t have much of a fight until they reach the barracks. Someone brilliantly or stupidly put the door to the reactor right in the middle of the troopers’ living quarters.

Most of them are barely dressed, let alone armed. Tifa would feel bad about cutting them down if they weren’t Shinra lackeys.

It still takes a while to work their way through the sheer volume of people, and by then someone has pulled the alarm and the guards in the reactor are waiting for them, bristling with advanced armor and weapons that Shinra doesn’t usually bother issuing to peons.

There’s also a Turk.

“Yo,” Reno says, flicking a lazy salute in their direction.

Tifa really hates that guy. She should have tried harder to relocate his spine.

“We’re here for the Huge Materia,” Cloud says.

Tifa charitably thinks that he’s maybe still a little fuzzy from whatever Sephiroth did, and that he’s not the kind of guy who announces his intentions to the enemy.

“Whatever,” Reno says. “You’re too late, I’ve already got it.”

This is a lie, because there is a giant piece of materia on a loading dolly right behind him.

Reno pulls out his PHS and presses a few buttons. “Yep. Uh-huh. They’re here. Sure, boss.”

“What are you doing?” Tifa says.

“Calling in back-up. Obviously.” He smirks, offers a mocking salute, and tosses something with an ominously blinking light on the floor. “Good seeing you.”

Seconds later, a massive robot drops down out of the ceiling.

“I’m going to rip off his leg and strangle him with it,” Tifa says. “And after we bailed out their asses in Wutai.”

“He’s helping us,” Vincent says.

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

He points to the complete chaos going on around them, as all the carefully organized defense get smashed up by the rampaging robot. They duck as a piece of the wall goes flying over their heads.

“But it might kill us, too!”

“He’s still a Turk,” Vincent says.

Cloud shrugs. “He’s got a point.”

Tifa grinds her teeth and goes looking for something to punch.

They manage to get to the Huge Materia, but all the flying bullets and flailing robot bits hit something critical and the sea comes pouring in. Cloud grabs the materia and Vincent grabs both of them, turning into that giant red-winged whatever it was from the fight in the City of the Ancients and blasting up through the water.

Wings… and swimming? Tifa’s pretty sure this should not actually be working and if her ears pop one more time she might actually explode but then they finally break the surface and she focuses on breathing for a bit.

“That sucked,” Cloud says.

She kicks him.

The thing that is Vincent flies up out of the water—how is that possible?—gives them both a solid shake like they’re misbehaving kittens, and heads for land. Once there, he shimmers and then he looks like Vincent again.

“Why are you completely dry?” Tifa asks, wringing out her hair. “That’s so unfair.”

Vincent raises an eyebrow, but before he can say anything, his PHS rings.

“You’ve got to be kidding me! How is that still working?”

He ignores her and picks up the phone. “Yes? Who is this? How did you get this number?”

Tifa and Cloud both sit up and pay attention.

“He says it’s Cait,” Vincent says. “Doesn’t sound like him. Yes, I know you were not actually a robot cat, just—what? Are you certain? Yes, I will tell them. Cloud and Tifa are with me. Yes.” He hangs up.

“Well?” Tifa demands.

“He says that he’s Cait’s alternate ego, a Shinra employee named Reeve Tuesti. He’s in Midgar right now, and they’re making some renovations to the top floors of the HQ that he calls, quote, wildly unsafe. He could use some assistance if we are available.”

As one, they turn to look at where the Junon cannon is supposed to be.

It’s gone.

So is the _Highwind._

“Shit.” 

~*~

Vincent steals a helicopter and Tifa shouts into his PHS the whole way out. They set down on a cliff in sight of Midgar to try and form some kind of plan.

“We ran into some Turk-shaped trouble, but we got the thing,” Tifa says, when Aerith and Cid land. “How about you two?”

“The condor egg hatched and the chick gave me a materia!” Aerith says.

Tifa blinks. “What?”

Cid growls. “Don’t even ask. Fucking weird, if you ask me.”

“A materia? Let me see!” Yuffie says.

Tifa shrieks and falls on her butt. “Where did you come from?”

“I headed out as soon as you got out of the Crater,” she says. “It was obvious something big was about to go down, and I wasn’t about to be left out of it. Duh.”

“As did I,” Nanaki says, appearing with a bit more warning. As is only polite, _Yuffie_.

“I brought all the ninja we could fit on the two airships we could get working,” Yuffie says. “We’re ready to take Shinra down.”

“I only brought myself,” Nanaki says, “but I, too, am prepared to fight.”

“If you’re quite done catching up?” Vincent asks dryly.

They sheepishly gather in a circle, next to a rusting sword.

Aerith stares at it.

“Yeah,” Cloud says, pointedly not looking at it. “This is where Zack died.”

There’s a moment of silence, then they get down to business.

“Our priority is the cannon,” Cloud says. “It’s ridiculous that they could somehow revive Sephiroth like this, but just in case, we need to stop them.”

“And Hojo,” Vincent says. “This is all his doing. He needs to be stopped, _now_.”

“So, two teams, then?” Cid asks. “One to go after Hojo, one to stop the cannon?”

“You’re going to need a diversion,” Yuffie says. “And I am so there. We’ll keep Shinra too busy to protect their own tower.”

“I’ll go with Yuffie,” Aerith says. “The people in the slums know me, and they’re just itching for a chance to get back at Shinra. I’m sure they’ll help.”

“Okay,” Tifa says. “How about this? The rest of us will break in Shinra HQ, then Vincent, Nanaki, Cloud, you guys go after Hojo. You all know him so you won’t underestimate him. Cid and I will meet up with this Reeve character and deal with the cannon.”

“I don’t know—”

A bolt of light shoots out of Midgar, heading north. Shortly after there’s a massive explosion, and even from here it’s obvious that the Shinra tower is on fire.

“It will just have to do,” Tifa says. “Yuffie, Aerith, good luck. Yuffie, can one of your airships drop us right over the building? I have a feeling time is of the essence.”

“Sure thing. I might even have some parachutes, if you look around.” 

~*~

The HQ is in complete chaos. The building is literally falling down around their ears, and there are confused troopers and stupid robots running around everywhere, looking for something to fight.

Vincent, Nanaki and Cloud head straight for the 67th floor. Vincent is certain that Hojo wouldn’t leave his precious experiments behind, and no one is inclined to argue with him.

Cid and Tifa find Reeve in the conference room where he promised to meet them. He’s as polished and expensively-dressed as any other Shinra exec, and Tifa instantly dislikes him.

“How do we know this isn’t a trap?” Tifa asks.

Reeve rolls his eyes. “I helped you already, didn’t I? And if you won’t trust that, trust this: Shinra is obviously done. Why support a doomed cause?”

“I’ve heard of you,” Cid says.

Right, because he was _also_ Shinra, right up until they accidentally kidnapped him.

“They said you’re an idiot with no loyalty or vision, and that’s when they were being nice.”

“I was the Head of Urban Development, with no budget and no support. Of course they thought I was an idiot.”

“I didn’t mean it in a bad way. Makes me more inclined to trust you.”

“Oh. Well, all right then.”

“Isn’t anyone going to ask _my_ opinion?” Tifa asks.

“The cannon is on the top floor. Or what’s left of the top floor. The backlash blew it up, and Rufus is still trapped in the wreckage somewhere.” Reeve grins, suddenly looking eerily like Cait. “How do you feel about hostages?”

“Well, I suppose you’ll do. For now,” Tifa says. Grudgingly.

They run up some stairs—oh, the flashbacks—because the elevators aren’t too reliable right now, and a nice bonus about having Reeve with them is they don’t have to fight. Normally Tifa would prefer to fight, but they’re kind of in a hurry right now.

They’re still not fast enough, because they run into the Turks on the ruins of the top floor.

Tifa bares her teeth at Reno, who grins and blows a kiss.

“Stop that,” Tseng says without looking away from the debris he’s digging through. “We don’t have time for this. Where’s Valentine?”

“Looking for Hojo,” Reeve says.

“Good. That man is insane. He’s got it into his head that if he fires the cannon again, it will give Sephiroth unstoppable power. Something about the mako. I stopped listening.”

“Could that work?” Tifa asks.

“Who knows? What I do know is, if the cannon goes off again without a proper cooldown, all six reactors will blow at once and it will most likely collapse the Plate.”

“Right. Cannon bad,” Cid says. “Are there controls somewhere? I mostly work with airships and spaceships, but I’m a good engineer.”

“Be my guest,” Tseng says, waving at a panel full of blinking lights. “I couldn’t make anything of it.”

Reeve rolls up his sleeves and starts helping to shift the debris. “Is Rufus still alive?”

“We’re not sure.”

“Not to be rude,” Tifa says, “but why do we care?”

“Hey, Rufus is the boss,” Reno says.

“Shinra _is_ the economy of more than three-quarters of the Planet,” Tseng says. “If we go down like this, a lot of people are going to suffer. And you won’t be able to get reparations out of a dead man.”

Tifa grinds her teeth. “Fine.”

She can’t believe that her role in the revolution is rescuing Rufus Shinra. What is the world coming to?

They have to dig very carefully, because everything is piled up against each other and shifts in unexpected ways, and sometimes there are holes in the floor over sudden, fatal drops.

Because the Goddess hates her, Tifa is the one to see a hint of once-white suit.

“I think he’s over here!”

Everyone rushes over and she lets herself be pushed out of the way. In spite of everything, she’s impressed with how carefully the Turks clear him out. She’s seen them with other Shinra execs, and they’re treating Rufus more like a fellow Turk than a boss.

Now why they’d choose a little shit like him to give their loyalty to, she has no idea. Vincent is a good guy, so not _all_ Turks are amoral assholes.

She glares at Reno just on principle.

“He’s still breathing,” Tseng says, looking grim. “Do we have any helicopters still working?”

Reno shakes his head. “I crashed mine getting here. And Rude walked.”

Rufus’s weak breaths are rattling in his chest, which is bleeding profusely, as is his head. One of his legs is twisted almost all the way around.

He’s not going to make it, it’s completely obvious.

Tseng looks like he might cry.

Tifa growls and shoves them all out of the way. “I have something that might help.”

“Materia?” Tseng asks.

“Do I look like I can use materia?” She holds up her canteen.

Tseng takes it and gives it and examines it. “Looks and smells like water.”

“It’s special water.”

He does not seem impressed.

“Look, it’s Aerith’s, all right? Like I want to waste a gift from the Planet on _him_.”

Tseng unbuttons his shirt and drips some on the ugly, partially-healed gash where Sephiroth had run him through. Where the water goes, the skin heals. “Okay. Give it to him.”

Tifa grumbles and does as she’s told. But she isn’t happy about it.

Rufus is such a mess that she isn’t sure where to start. She pours some over the obvious wounds, then when it looks like it won’t be immediately fatal they get him up to a sitting position and make him drink some. The injuries disappear before their eyes, but not without emitting some greenish smoke.

“What’s that?” Tseng asks sharply.

“I honestly don’t know,” Tifa says. “It was the same when we healed Cloud, but not Aerith or me. I didn’t see what happened with Vincent. Maybe it’s clearing up an infection?”

Rufus opens his eyes, and more unfortunately, his mouth. “What are you doing here? What did you give me?”

Tifa barely refrains from slapping him. It will be more enjoyable when he’s completely healed. And in front of a larger audience. “You’re welcome, asshole. Good going trusting the mad scientist, by the way. If my friends save your ass fast enough there might even still be a city left for you to grovel to.”

He looks almost comically offended, then his eyes narrow.

There’s really no telling where that might have ended, but Reeve’s PHS rings, interrupting them.

“It’s Nanaki,” he says.

Tifa blinks, getting side-tracked trying to imagine Nanaki dialing a PHS.

“Oh dear,” Reeve says.

“What is it?” she asks, pretty sure she doesn’t actually want to know.

“Sephiroth is here, in the skies above the city. They think it’s the real one, this time. Also, he has wings now.”

Tifa’s halfway out the door by the time he finishes speaking. Cid’s totally caught up in whatever he’s doing to the cannon, which is probably important, so she leaves him to it. “Reeve! Watch Rufus, don’t let him slither away!”

She pauses.

“I hope you know that this is your fault,” she informs Rufus, then runs out, looking for an uninterrupted view of the sky. You’d think it would be easier on the top floor, but there’s a lot of destruction in the way.

She finds some metal steps leading up to a platform and almost runs right over Cloud. “What’s happening!? Are you all right? Are you going to go crazy again?”

“Hey, Tifa, good to see you, too.”

She glares at him.

“Look, I know just as much as you. We were fighting Hojo, and then he started mutating and we had to fight a bunch of weird monsters, and then he shouted something about his triumph before finally dying. We think. His body’s still hanging around. Nanaki’s trying to commune with the Planet or something for some hint about what to do.”

“Oh, I’ve seen this before,” Tifa says. “Up in the City of the Ancients. Hold on.”

She tosses the rest of her canteen over Hojo’s mangled body. There’s some hissing, a lot of green smoke, and then it finally dissipates properly.

“Ugh.”

“Well, we can tell Vincent that’s done at least,” Cloud says, looking very satisfied.

“Yeah, where is Vincent, anyway?”

“Well, Tifa, how many people on our team can sprout wings and fly?”

She glares at him. “Is this really the time to be a pain in the ass?”

“Don’t really have anything else to do, so why not?”

“I believe Yuffie and Aerith are finding success,” Nanaki says, pointing out various fires far below them. “Shinra will be crippled by this.”

“Rufus made it, though,” Tifa says. “He seems convinced that it’s better for everyone if Shinra doesn’t collapse overnight.”

“Probably true,” Nanaki says. “Shinra’s resources would be a great aid in bringing clean, renewable energy to the citizens of this Planet. And they do not allow towns and outposts to have an independent military, so everyone would likely be overrun by monsters before they could organize an effective defense. Well, not in Cosmo, because we have out own warriors, but elsewhere.”

“Don’t worry,” Cloud says, patting Tifa’s arm awkwardly. “We’ll make sure Rufus understands the new way things are going to work. And if he proves a slow learner, you can always kick his ass off the tower later.”

That does bring some small measure of comfort.

After that, the three of them go back to squinting up into the smog, trying to discern how the aerial battle is going and feeling very useless. 

~*~

Night is falling when Nanaki shouts and runs at Tifa, pushing her out of the way just as two bodies crash onto the platform, denting the thick metal.

It’s difficult to make out any clear detail in the dim light and the chaos of battle, but there isn’t anyone else it could be besides Vincent and Sephiroth.

She’d heard that Sephiroth had wings now, but this is just weird. Vincent’s are red and kind of raggedy-looking, but still more-or-less like what you expect giant, man-sized bat-wings to look like. Sephiroth has at least five, all of different sizes, and probably more that she’s just missing in the shuffle.

Also, where are his legs?

The two combatants are shouting at each other, but none of it makes any sense. The Sephiroth-thing is ranting about his mother and his plans to become a god, and the Vincent-thing is going on about a calamity.

“Should we try and do something?” Cloud asks, sword ready but keeping his distance.

One of the wings hits a metal railing and slices clean through it.

“This might be out of our league,” Tifa says. “You sure you’re okay? No headaches?”

“Whatever Aerith gave me, it really works. I’m not as strong as I was, but it’s totally worth it.”

They jump back to avoid another wing, Vincent’s this time.

With a noise that no human throat could produce, the Vincent-thing sinks its claws into the largest of the Sephiroth-thing’s wings, a great black one, and yanks the canteen from its belt. Biting the top off, it dumps the contents all over its enemy.

The Sephiroth-thing screeches, so high-pitched it feels like her _brain_ is bleeding, and there’s a proliferation of green smoke. From what she little she can see through it, the wings are dissolving.

Eww. Is it some kind of acid?

When the smoke clears, the Vincent-thing has its claws around a normal, human arm, and the thing he has pinned is just Sephiroth how he normally looks, just more naked.

“The Calamity from the Skies is no more,” the Vincent-thing says, and shifts back into Vincent.

See, his clothes stayed with him! Sometimes Tifa hates her life.

Sephiroth shakes his head, notes the golden gauntlet pinning his arm, then looks around. “This isn’t Nibelheim.”

“You did not just say that,” Tifa says. “This is not a thing that is happening. I won’t allow it.”

He looks at her. “Do I know you?”

She throws her canteen at his head.


	12. Chapter 12

On the one year anniversary of the Battle for Midgar, the new Avalanche gathers in Midgar to reminisce and to catch up on each other’s lives. There’s something about saving a Planet together that creates strong bonds, even if you didn’t know each other for very long.

Tifa and Aerith are living here, so they open up their home for the party. Since he also lives in the area, Reeve is the first to arrive.

“Hey, did you see my plans for the community center?” he asks Aerith, giving Tifa an absent pat on the head in greeting.

The two of them are an unstoppable team. He’s completely overhauled the slums, putting all kinds of support programs in place, and she’s made real headway into reclaiming the dead zone around Midgar. And then there’s their mutual project to dismantle the Plate, which is scheduled to begin demolition in the next few months. It’s amazing.

But not so much that she wants to talk about it when they’re supposed to be having a party. “No shop talk,” she warns.

“Of course not,” Aerith says, giving Tifa a kiss and mouthing ‘later’ behind her back.

“I saw that,” Tifa says, shooing her girlfriend out of the doorway and into the kitchen. “Reeve, since you’re early, you can help with the snacks.”

“I’m not much of a cook,” he says, looking daunted by the food covering every surface.

“You built Cait Sith, you can slice an onion,” Tifa says, putting a knife in his hand.

He’s really quite terrible at it, which makes for an amusing hour until there’s another knock at the door. Tifa goes to get it, knowing that they’ll be talking about their projects the second she’s gone. Better to let them get it out of their systems. She’s in charge of security for the now-independent Urban Renewal Corporation, so she has a lot of practice wrangling those two.

It’s Tseng, holding a platter of exquisitely made Wutaian delicacies.

“Go away,” Tifa says.

“I do not come empty-handed,” he says, with the confidence of a man who is somehow good friends with her girlfriend, despite stalking her and trying to kidnap her and _actually_ kidnapping her.

Tifa rolls her eyes. “Yeah, but what about the rest of your entourage?”

“That’s harsh,” Reno says. He’s carrying a pineapple. A whole pineapple.

“Do you even know what to do with that?” she asks.

He shrugs. “Eat it?”

Rude and Elena have brought pastries, store-bought, but from the good bakery down in the old Sector 6. She’s very fond of that bakery.

And Yuffie will be annoyed if they don’t have _something_ Wutaian. Honestly, she could eat Wutaian any day, why wouldn’t she want to try something different while she’s in Midgar?

“Yeah, fine,” Tifa says, conceding with ill-grace. She can always throw the pineapple _at_ Reno, if the need arises. The thought puts a real smile on her face as she waves them in.

Her arm shoots out to block the last in line, and seriously considers slamming the door in his face.

“That’s rude,” Rufus Shinra says, smirking all over his stupid, smarmy face.

He’s landed on his feet, the rat bastard. The clean energy contracts they used to bribe him into voluntarily taking apart the mako reactors are turning a profit, and he’s been throwing money at everything he can think of here in Midgar, blatantly buying respectability. And proving that people are fucking idiots, they’re falling for it. Lately they’ve been calling for him to run for mayor.

The new Shinra Electric Power Company is just that now, a power company. Slowly but surely, first the governments, then the military, are separated from the business. Rufus was the only executive to survive the purge, the others disappearing to parts unknown, and he’s showing every sign of following the rules and being a good little citizen. Who also makes a profit.

Slippery bastard.

“You know,” he says, “I think you’ll find that I funded Avalanche for a number of years, so I have as much right to be here as you.”

“Now listen here, you—”

“Tifa!”

She bites back any bad words in the presence of delicate ears, and he takes the opportunity to slip past her and into the house.

Tifa scoops up Marlene and gives her a big hug. She can kill the little bastard later. She knows where he sleeps. “Goodness, you’re so big now!”

“Haha, that’s what Daddy says!”

Tifa transfers Marlene to her hip so she can give Barret a one-armed hug. “Glad you could make it!”

He scowls. “At least I was _invited_ this time!”

Aerith appears with a smile and a hug for both of them. “There’s no way you could have made it all the way to Midgar from Corel in a day. And you had your own battles to fight there.”

“Yeah, for a stupid materia that didn’t matter anyway,” he grumbles.

They’ve all heard about how pissed Barret is to have been left out of the ‘final battle’ and, for the sake of their friendship, learned to ignore it.

“So how’s the alternative energy going?” Tifa asks, her go-to distraction.

“Corel has the largest wind farm in the world!” he brags.

“Ah, but Wutai has the largest hydro-plant,” Yuffie says. “And it’s going to be more productive over time than your wind farms.”

“It is not!”

“Is so!”

Tifa rolls her eyes at the teenaged Empress of Wutai. “Do you really have to wind him up like that?”

“Is that a trick question? Ooh, snacks!”

They have a bit of a reprieve from new guests for a while, snacking and catching up on each other’s lives, then there’s another knock at the door.

“The party has arrived!” Cid announces.

“Did you remember to get Nanaki?” Tifa asks.

He rolls his eyes. “Yes, mother. You’re worse than Shera.”

“I don’t know how that woman puts up with you. I thought she and her husband were thinking about coming to Midgar?”

“Nah, she’s got the space bug, same as me. We’ll get that rocket into space, just you wait and see.”

“You promised you weren’t going to talk about the rocket,” Vincent says, appearing at his shoulder.

When Cid went back to Rocket Town with a significant chunk of Shinra’s money, Vincent went with him. Shera refused to come back to work without assurances that Cid would stop being an asshole, but since that’s impossible she settled for his house and his best engineer as her husband.

Which just goes to show that Cloud is an idiot, because he thought Shera and Cid were married to each other.

But anyway, Cid converted one of the rooms in the rocket into an apartment, and he and Vincent have been living there ever since. Together.

It’s a topic of much interest among their mutual friends, but they haven’t made any sort of announcement yet so it’s discussed exclusively behind their backs.

“Everyone knows he’s going to talk about that damn rocket,” Tifa says, hugging them both. “Vincent, Aerith was looking for you earlier. They found some references to a Project Chaos in an old Shinra vault that might have something to do with you.”

“I will look for her.”

Both men come inside, letting Tifa greet Nanaki properly. “Hey, how’s the library going?”

“Grandfather is very excited. Once again, scholars are coming from all over the world to learn about the Planet at Cosmo Canyon. We’ll make sure that no one forgets the significance of mako and the Lifestream ever again.”

“Good for you. And how’s your girlfriend?”

“Deneh is not my girlfriend! And she’s well, she’s keeping an eye on things for me while I’m in Midgar.”

“Good for you.”

There are really too many people for their small house, even with the patio doors open to their extensive garden, but it’s a pleasant feeling, to be surrounded by friends. And a few extras who can’t be bothered to mind their own business.

Like he can sense her ire, Reno turns and winks at her.

There’s another knock at the door.

She mimes strangling him, then goes to answer.

It’s Cloud, of course, smiling and looking healthier and more sure of herself than she’s seen him look since… well, since ever, actually. “Cloud, you look great! You’re enjoying the life of a traveling mercenary, then?”

“Yep. You should see my motorcycle, she’s a real beauty.”

“I’m sure.”

He looks over his shoulder. “Sephiroth, stop lurking back there, it’s weird.”

Tifa braces herself.

Sephiroth looks—nothing at all like how she remembers. Those iconic green eyes have dulled to a more ordinary brown, and his hair is growing out dark, almost black. Since he hasn’t cut it, it looks like he has a stripe, or a questionable dye job. He’s also wearing the same practical cargo pants and heavy boots as Cloud, though he has a long-sleeved shirt and a vest instead of one of those high-necked sweaters Cloud is obsessed with. He doesn’t even have his signature sword; no one’s quite sure what happened to it after it was taken out of the former President’s body, and to her knowledge he hasn’t even asked.

“Miss Lockhart.”

She glares at Cloud, even though he’d called to ask her if he could bring Sephiroth and she’d already said yes. As well as a few other things.

“Tifa was really grateful to hear that we put down that monster uprising near Gongaga,” Cloud says, looking her straight in the eye. “We have some friends there.”

“Yeah, thanks,” she says, without much enthusiasm.

“We were happy to help,” Sephiroth says.

Tseng, damn him, was completely right about how much the Shinra military did to protect people from monsters, and bounty hunters like Cloud and Sephiroth are increasingly common these days. They’re both great at it, some of the best, and have saved a lot of people. They’ll also take a home-cooked meal and a warm fire if the town can’t afford anything else, which is quickly turning them into folk heroes.

“Come on in, then, we’re just getting ready to start dinner,” Tifa says, only a little grudgingly, and steps back to let Sephiroth into her home.


End file.
